HIRED fURNlSHED 



MARGARET B,\^GHT 




G L A N D 



TsmM^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

.XX4-^ r^ ^ :^ 

Cliap.^£^... Copyright No.,__ 



UNSTED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 





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Hired Furnished. 

BEING CERTAIN 

ECONOMICAL HOUSEKEEPING 
ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND. 



/ 

BY / 
MARGARET B.^WRIGHT. 



A_ 



i-\^t'^' 






BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1897. 







oRouen 



STARS INDICATE LOCATIONS OF THE " HIRTNGS." 



Copyright, 1897, 
By Roberts Brothers. 




THE LIBRARY 
or CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 






John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



TO THE 
BELOVED COMPANION OF THESE HIKINGS, 



PREFACE. 



When the author of this little book returned to 
her own country, she was greatly surprised to dis- 
cover how vast the multitude to whom Europe is 
still an unrealized dream. "On the other side," 
every summer is so full of Americans that one 
absent long years from home naturally supposes that 
we all get there, rich and not rich, somehow and 
some time. Even if fewer of our country people 
went " Across " every year on their own responsi- 
bility, it almost seems (at least over there), that very 
few escape the scores, even hundreds, of Personally 
Conducted Parties whose advertisements occupy so 
much space in our newspapers, and themselves so 
much in European steamers, hotels, and railway- 
trains. 

Nevertheless, the fact is, that as many (or more) 
remain at home as ever go abroad, remain to hope 
for, and to dream of the happy day, ever and ever 
so long delayed, when they too may set forth to 
wander in the world of art and story. Even are 
there still others who scarcely hope at all, but 
merely dream of what might be, if dreams and dol- 
lars were the companions they almost never are. 
For it is as sure as fate that dreams and dollars can 
scarcely exist together, dollars so soon put an end to 
dreams by turning them into realities. 

With thoughts chiefly of these two classes of stay- 
at-homes, the story of these happy, these more than 



vill PREFACE. 

happy, " Hirings " was written. It is so little a 
matter after all, even for moderate purses, to go 
abroad, and that too without the breathless and 
cursory glimpses, really only squints, at storied 
Europe, of the "personally-conducted," that one 
who knows longs to tell every tired teacher, every 
over-worked college professor, every toiling author, 
indeed everybody with dreams and time, how it may 
be done. " Time ? " Time is money, we are often 
enough reminded; yet thousands of us have more 
time than money, time that perhaps cannot better be 
used than in the place of many dollars otherwise 
necessary for seeing Europe. Why should not a 
college professor's sabbatical, for instance, be spent 
in exploring beautiful England, hiring cottage and 
villa homes for six weeks or three months at a time, 
thus with always a delightfully inexpensive pied-a- 
terre to return to from far and near wanderings, on 
foot, on bicycle, by cheap railway trips.'* The 
author, with that famous work on hand that is to set 
the universe aflame by-and-by, what reason that he 
or she should not write in a " Hired-furnished " 
among English downs, among English meadows, in 
rustic villages, upon the English coast, rather than 
in a dull American village or expensive city lodg- 
ings ? The gain to health, and thus to the magnimt 
optis, would be incalculable, for all out-of-doors 
exercise in England would naturally resolve itself 
into walking miles away to historic castles, manors, 
picturesque hamlets, places and things immortal in 
song and story. In the space of a year, even of six 
months, very much of England could thus be fami- 
liarly known, and England lends herself most ex- 
quisitely to passionate pilgrimages, even in winter, 
with her gardens duskily abloom in November, her 
waysides and fields yellow with primroses in Feb- 
ruary, her meadows green all the year, even under 



PREFACE. IX 

light snows. Except during the one wild storm that 
comes usually in January, it is possible for the 
ardent pedestrian in England to walk as many miles 
as he pleases every day of the year. In many parts 
bicycling also is practicable, but not always in the 
soft southern counties, where the frost darts into 
the ground and out again at its own wayward will. 

As is told in these pages, furnished cottages 
are abundant all over England, hundreds to be ob- 
tained at the prices named. In answer to our own 
advertisement came offers from Ramsgate, Margate, 
Worthing, Deal, Folkestone, Dover, Littlehampton, 
Broadstairs, Colchester, Canterbury, Cookham, 
Heme Bay, Great Marlow, Aylesbury, Winchelsea, 
" Near Fareham," " Near Salisbury," Farnham, 
Basingstoke, Reading, with half-a-dozen others so 
near London that the fog spoiled them for our pur- 
pose. We advertised but once ; our whole supply 
(in England) came from that one source. 

Established in one of these cottages or villas, 
living expenses are as much under one's own control 
as in one's native village or city. The stranger need 
have no apprehension that his nationality costs him 
dear in the purchase of potatoes, bread and butter, 
as it does cost dearly in any continental market- 
place. The English provision-dealer, whatever his 
wares, is exactly as honest as those in our own 
country ; the farmer who brings butter, eggs, and 
vegetables to the cottage door gives not an ounce 
less to the pound that his customer is of Boston or 
Chicago, and not of London. Even did the carnal 
man prompt him to give only eleven eggs for a 
shilling, instead of twelve, the business man of him 
would know that the customer could not read the 
local papers without learning the market prices of 
everything. 

One important consideration of an English winter 



X PRE FA CE. 

is the cost of fuel. That cost seems absurd to us, 
with our ever-devouring furnaces, our consuming 
coal-stoves, even our hearty grates. English winters 
are damper than ours, but indescribably less biting. 
Outside of London, where the sun shines, summer 
grates are usually quite sufficient for winter tenants, 
with the best coal at twenty to twenty-five shillings 
a ton, usually about twenty-two. On the southern 
coast, as at Worthing, the bedrooms, even of in- 
valids, need very little or no artificial heat, and draw- 
ing-room fires burn dimly until evening. It is the 
same on the west coast. Englishmen themselves 
might criticise this statement, having so little idea 
of what Americans mean by " a good fire." 

" Hiring-furnished " has not often been tried by 
Americans in rural England. Two at least of the 
small number of those that have tried it enthusias- 
tically recommend the plan to those dreamers who 
are forever " haunted by the horizon," and for whom 
imagination gilds and refines into fairer than palaces, 
temporary homes in a foreign land that only ten or 
twenty dollars a month may " hire furnished." 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Hired Furnished i 

The Dove-Cote 48 

Fort Cheer 79 

Martin and La Vieille 107 

"Uncle Peter" 126 

Garrison Service 138 

In the Jersey "States" 145 

Sark 155 

A Little Dash into France 189 

Guernsey , 224 

Hauteville House ........ 239 

Nellie Palmer 255 

The Island of Alderney, its People, 

AND its Cows , 270 

The Ladder .0 298 

Clover Villa 325 

"S. S." .351 

An Acquaintance of Mrs. Clover . . 364 

Phcebus 369 

Windy How 375 

Wordsworth's "Parson Sympson " . . 407 

MoNA 428 

Sundries 449 



Hired Furnished. 



" Let us take a country house/'sneezed she. 

" Why not a dozen ? " croaked he. 

She decHned to be suppressed. 

" Yes, why not a dozen, one at a time? " 

The afternoon was not gray, although a winter 
afternoon in London. It was not the dirty gray 
of afternoons suggesting old kitchen nuns whose 
devotion is elbow service rather than knee. Even 
a dirty gray would have been auroral compared 
with it. It was a filthy brown, almost a greasy 
black, the hue of mendicant monks, and its odor 
was — well, it was if possible even worse than a 
begging friar's. The drawing-room seemed full 
of smoke, sewer gas weighted the air, the lighted 
chandelier struggled ineffectually to lessen the 
gloom, and both he and she kept each other com- 
pany in uncouth noises, all because this was Novem- 
ber in London. Fifteen minutes before, she had 
come home in a piteous state, having gone out to 
buy a lamp because of that fog-choked chande- 
lier. She had managed to find her way to the 
nearest shops in Oxford Street, although with 
extreme difficulty. The lamp could not be sent 
home, no goods were being delivered in this 



2 HIRED FURNISHED. 

dangerous darkness, so she took it in her good 
right hand, the left carrying the porcelain globe. 
" Though I meet all the dukes and duchesses of 
the English peerage," she magnificently thought, 
"neither right hand nor left will I hide." She 
knew very well that the sharpest eyes in the 
peerage could see neither hand. 

Returning, the lamp-bearer came to grief. She 
utterly lost her way, the way familiar to her for 
years. Impossible to see the names on the street 
corners ; impossible to define any landmark ; im- 
possible to recognize any shop or house passed 
every day. Whether she had missed the right 
turnings she could not tell ; that their own familiar 
door was but a hand's-breadth away she tried to 
hope. Twice she stopped to ask where she 
was. One answer was, " Somewhere between 
Kentish Town and Victoria ; " the other, " I wish I 
knew myself, Madam." Grotesque forms drifted 
past her with vague outlines and shrouded faces ; 
but for constant gasping, choking, coughing, she 
might have fancied them ghostly fleers from 
Pluto's realm. She knew them to be of flesh 
and blood by the sympathy of her own suffering. 
Imprisoned odors of sulphurous chimney smoke ; 
of dead and living flesh, the rank out-put of 
butcher shops and public houses, — stung her 
throat, scalded her eyes, scorched her nostrils. 
Tears ran down her cheeks ; she heard them drop 
upon her ribbons, and she knew that channels of 
lesser grime were thus marked upon her counte- 
nance. Yet she dare not wipe a single tear away 
or reduce her blackamoor aspect, for to put clown 
lamp or globe even for a little instant was to lose 
sight of them forever. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 3 

Then a gleam of something like hope, for some- 
body brushed closely by whose hobbling gait and 
crooked figure she often saw in their own Square. 
*' I have only to follow this lunatic," she thought, 
"and he will conduct me home." 

Then he vanished utterly, and left no wrack 
behind. 

In the course of time, black bitter time, some 
one of the distorted spirits of the fog proved to be 
a Giant Greatheart. His face she never saw, but 
he took her by the shoulders and turned her nose 
from north to east. " This is Store Street," he 
said. " You know your way from here, I suppose." 

So did she " suppose," that inkily weeping 
wanderer, but in less than three minutes she wished 
she had clung to Giant Greatheart no matter what 
his face might be, and refused to be parted from him. 

Then, O Joy ! Then she heard a blessed voice 
crying at brief intervals, " This is Gower Street," 
and she hoped everybody gave the invisible angel 
twopence as she did. A little farther on another 
heavenly voice sang, "This is Torrington Square," 
and she was at home ; that is, after counting the 
doorsteps till she came to No. 999. 

" I was just going out to look for you," he said 
anxiously. Then he added, " But I never should 
have known you from a chimney-sweep." 

A laugh, a hollow, mocking, horrible laugh, 
issued from her sooty lips at the bare idea of 
looking for anybody on such a day. 

" Let us take a country house," said she. " Let 
us answer some of the many advertisements of 
seaside and country villas to let at a nominal 
price for ^he winter. Let us go into the sunshine 



4 HIRED FURNISHED. 

bathing Albion's white cliffs and kissing Enghsh 
meadows outside of black London. Let us hear 
what the wild waves are saying, and keep the rust 
from somebody's summer grates ; the moth from 
our own daily toil." 

Whether the earth-rending concatenation of 
sound that answered her was of admiration or 
derision she never really knew. 

They decided to advertise in the " Church 
Times." " It goes into all the rectories and 
vicarages of rural England," she said, " and all 
the spinsters read it." 

For their seventy-five cent advertisement they 
received threescore answers. There were villas, 
cottages, and if not mansions, at least houses that 
were neither villas nor cottages, but brick and 
substantial, gas-lighted and in seaside cities. 
Three of these letters were amusing inasmuch as 
they offered three villas at Ramsgate in the same 
street and with consecutive numbers. 

Two of the letters the lady read aloud as fair 
specimens of them all. 

"This one is from a place ^near Colchester,' 
but it seems too far away for our little time now. 

"Dear Madam, — In answer to your advertise- 
ment I wish to say that I have a most comfortably 
furnished detached cottage to let. Would take ten 
shillings per week from quiet small family. 

" The house is situated three or four minutes from 
sea, with good views of same. Ten minutes' walk 
from Frinton Station on G. E. R. Two hours from 
Liverpool Street Station. Five minutes from Church 
and dissenting mission room. Bracing air, splendid 
sands. Immediate possession may be had. 

" Yours truly. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 5 

" He does not state number and character of 
rooms," they observed. "We have not time for 
a correspondence on the subject." 

The next was more definite and was from 
Faversham. 

" Madam, — Seeing your advertisement of this day 
for country cottage, I beg to offer one to your notice 
containing Draw'g and Din'g and Kitch., three 
good bedrooms, and other offices comfortably fur- 
nished. Would let it for six weeks at ten shillings per 
week. The house is detached and situate near Dover 
and Deal, and church near, about twenty-five min- 
utes from station and about ten minutes' walk from 
the Bay. Can be seen by arrangement. 

" Yours truly. 



The Americans carefully put these letters "^way 
for future use and chose Pevensey Villa. Now 
Pevensey Villa was only an experiment. It was 
hired by the week and only for six weeks, so the 
Americans were less exacting of requirement than 
had their hiring been for a longer period. Indeed, 
their paramount desire was to flee away the very 
soonest possible from darkness and gnashing of 
teeth, so they engaged without seeing it the villa 
to which was the shortest flight. Afterwards, when 
they found that this was not only the most 
economical but the most delightful way of seeing 
and knowing beautiful England, they became very 
high and mighty in their requirements, and picked 
and chose among their Mems as though they were 
spending fortunes in hiring furnished. 

Darkness was falling when they left their train 
less than two hours from London. Only two 
other people descended where they did, and the 



O HIRED FURNISHED. 

aspect of the little station was not smiling. Neither 
was that of the crouching village outside, which 
seemed a moist, unpleasant body, with a bad cold 
in the head. They found that they were still two 
miles from their villa, two dank, damp, dumb miles, 
to be done in a hired coach from an adjacent stable, 
a huge coach that loomed high above wayside cot- 
tages as though it were caiTying Brobdingnagian 
princes. 

Darkness had entirely fallen when at the end 
of a perfectly flat ride between draining ditches 
they came out through wide gates and saw the 
sea before them. The coach seemed driving 
straight into the water, but before the final plunge 
it was arrested by two running figures, — a man 
in a fisherman's jacket, and a woman in the most 
extraordinary head gear they ever saw. These 
proved to be their proprietors, who had been on 
the watch for them. 

" You see, sir, if you 'd driv up to henny bother 
villa to let," said Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, ''you'd 
never got haway." 

Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, they learned later, must 
always be addressed in a robust voice, not that her 
ears were dull, but because she never quitted that 
thickly wadded pumpkin-shaped hood day in (or 
night, it is believed) or day out, while they knew 
her ; this was a matter of rejoicing to them so 
long as they believed they had thus come upon 
a Dickensesque landlady, a tribe distinguished for 
immovable bonnets. 

Pevensey Villa proved to be a double one, 
peaked and puckered with beatings of the sea- 
side weather, flat on the flat ground, a little white 
picket fence about it, and directly facing the sea. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 7 

The Americans had the favorite side, their pro- 
prietors told them, and as the Americans saw, it 
being the one most open to the wide view of uni- 
versal flatness. A bright fire welcomed them ; the 
sitting-room was the very picture of a home nest, 
with its large glowing lamp, its snugly drawn win- 
dow-shades, and lace curtains. 

" Are we in clover? " 

She must have spoken with vigor, for Mrs. 
Pumpkin-Hood quickly replied, '' No, mum, no 
such villa in Pemsy Bay." 

" Pemsy — " thus Dr. Andrew Boorde named 
Pevensey when he willed away his house in 1547; 
thus the inhabitants name it still. 

While Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood ran over to her 
own house for sheets, one other table-cloth and 
four towels, the entire "linen" of the villa, the 
new-comers took observations. But first the lady 
wrote in a book — " Mem. Lucky I brought 
towels ; never hire furnished without bringing extra 
towels and table-cloths." 

The sitting-room was undeniably small, but 
then two persons so closely related as these do 
not need a large one ; if they insisted upon large- 
ness, why, there v/ere the French windows open- 
ing upon a little balcony ; they were like cathedral 
doors. There was a neat carpet, fresh wall paper, 
'' ornaments," including a thermometer on the 
mantel, and window-shades that came down on 
the run but went only crawlingly up again. The 
little wall closets beside the fireplace had empty 
shelves, but the space beneath was a chaos of 
bottles, left by previous tenants. Neither of the 
Americans remarked that the key must be turned 
to keep the sitting-room door closed, or that the 



8 HIRED FURNISHED. 

outside door would shut only by argument of a 
stalwart kick, then open again only by means of 
another from the outside. Not yet did they know 
that to every one who rang at that front door dur- 
ing their hibernation the salutation through the frail 
barrier should be, " Would you mind to kick ? " 

But both noticed that the sitting-room was 
beautifully warm, and that the little round table 
was brightly laid in readiness for the chops and 
bread they had brought with them, and the keen 
hunger given them already by the change of air. 

'^ And so near the Infinite, the Eternal Sea," 
she reverently chanted as she set the steaming tea- 
pot down. 

" What 's the matter with its nose ? " he asked. 

" Beds aired ? Yes, mum ; slept in 'em ourselves 
last night." 

Considering the chronic dampness of beds in 
England, particularly seaside beds, this was extra- 
ordinary thoughtfulness. The lady asked vaguely 
but sympathetically concerning possible rheumatic 
twinges in the weather-beaten substance of their 
proprietors. 

" Never 'ave henny," answered the pair. 

Days later, when the conversation touched in 
its flight upon that perpetual hood, " Nooralgie," 
the wearer explained, and the strangers were much 
disappointed. For do not Dickensesque landladies 
wear eternal black bonnets only to show which 
way the wind is listing? 

Fires were soon lighted in four rooms (the two 
comfortable attics left unexplored), and after a 
cosey evening by the sitting-room fire with the 
wild waves hinting unutterable things through the. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 9 

chinks of the French window, they went to bed 
before the Hghts of Hastings burned low or those 
of nearer Eastbourne. 

She awoke from her first sleep to find herself 
in a coffin. Above that lidless coffin rose the 
damp walls of a tomb, a mildewed tomb, a shat- 
tered antique tomb smelling of things long dead, 
of seasons gone to decay. Upon the coffin's edge 
horrible shapes grinned and capered, clutching, 
snatching, clawing shapes, named Rheumatism, 
Fever, Neuralgia, Everydisease and Death. Out- 
side the tomb, far away from tliat danse macabre^ 
she heard the wild waves saying, " Well aired ? 
Slept in last night ? Go to, thou dunce's duncely 
daughter! Those beds have not been slept in 
save by the mists (which are not misters) since the 
bathing season ended." 

" And here it is almost Christmas ! " she cried. 
" Come, arouse thee, arouse thee, ray perilously 
sleeping one, and help me pile these bedclothes 
before the fire ! " 

" ' Bed is bed, however bedly ! ' " he quoted in 
yawning. " What do you expect, — all the luxuries 
of the season, even to a truth-telling landlady, for 
our paltry two dollars and a half a week, * linning 
and plate ' included ? I doubt if some of them 
are not missing even at fifteen dollars a week in 
the height of the summer." (By "plate" the 
sleepy one meant five lead forks and eight spoons 
of pure pewter. ''I will mem them," she had said, 
and wrote down " Mein. Never hire furnished 
without bringing our own silver." 

Glorious sunshine beat broadly into the sitting- 
room the next morning as they tilted fragrant and 
exhilarating even if nicked cups before a blazing 



lO HIRED FURNISHED. 

fire. Two long toasting forks were in the villa's 
furnishing, and they gleefully made the toast as 
they needed it, bronze and piping hot. 

" We are like young Wordsworth and Dorothy 
toasting their breakfasts before the fire in Dove 
Cottage," she said. 

'^ I cannot imagine Wordsworth doing anything 
for himself, even making toast," said he. " Dor- 
othy toasted for both. That 7vas a sister ! " 

The hint, if one was intended, fell upon deaf ears. 

" Ceylon tea," she smacked, '' delicious at only 
fifty-five cents a pound ! No wonder England 
makes the worst coffee in the world." 

Only a stone's throw from the breakfast table 
the sea sparkled with scarcely a murmur. Almost 
as near, one of Pitt's martello towers, meant to 
frighten the French, gleamed like marble, albeit 
really a most ramshackle and mouldy affair, stuffed 
with somebody's hay. This was their nearest 
neighbor of the line of seventy-five towers en- 
circling the coast from Eastbourne to Hastings. 

" W^e do not need to be more cosey," he mag- 
nanimously confessed. 

" I hope London fog is thick enough to dip 
with a spoon," she purred, albeit not particu- 
larly vicious, as women go. 

Pevensey Bay is not picturesque. It has no 
trees, no white cliffs, no beetling rocks, no verdure 
even in summer, and its "terraces," "places," 
and "villas " are all dolefully new, though faded. 
It is a hamlet of cheap summer cottages and one 
shop, squatted upon the edge of a marsh euphe ra- 
ised as Pevensey " Levels " and upon rough 
shingle, blazing, glaring in summer, in winter hid- 



HIRED FURNISHED. II 

eously bare though never bleak. The marsh 
(pardon, the " Level ") extends from the ancient 
seaport of Pevensey where William the Norman, 
that famous warman, landed with his motley crew 
of artisans and land-pirates. Deposits from a tiny 
river and the receding of the sea have formed the 
present site of Pevensey Bay ; over the very spot 
where the villa stands, the adventurer's fleet sailed 
twice at least, for from Pevensey he sailed six 
months after the Conquest for his first visit to 
Normandy. 

William, the burly, half-savage landgrabber, to 
the Americans was still very much alive in that 
Saxon region. They grew upon such familiar 
terms with him that they occasionally referred to 
him as " WiUie," even " Bill," after the fashion of 
their favorite New York weekly, by way of variety 
in such continual mention. 

Within walking distance (a " tidy walk," the 
natives would call it) is the spot where Harold fell, 
taking with him all the sympathies of these late- 
arriving Americans — the battle-field where the 
greedy Norman became forevermore " the Con- 
queror." At night the glow of Hastings edged 
the disk of their darkness ; whenever they re- 
turned by train from their many excursions, their 
way from the station ran through the grounds of 
a Roman castle already a ruin when the Norman 
landed beside it ; in the same spot, many say, 
where Caesar landed a thousand years before the 
Norman was born. This Pevensey Castle stands 
upon a slight eminence, and its ivy-grown walls 
are a landmark for miles. Its fifteen massive 
towers buttressing the walls were added probably 
soon after the Conquest, by one of William's half 



12 HIRED FURNISHED. 

brothers, the Earl of Morton^ to whom much of 
Sussex was given. 

In this castle in 1399, Lady Pelham, who had 
valiantly defended it against King Richard (al- 
though women must not vote because they cannot 
fight), wrote to her '' trevve lorde," the earliest 
letter extant in the English language. Here, in 
1405, young James the First of Scotland spent 
some time of his captivity in England ; and here 
in 1 41 9, Queen Joan of Navarre, widow of Henry 
Fourth, was imprisoned by her stepson. But per- 
haps none of those distinguished people ever 
occupied so high a position in the castle as these 
undistinguished Americans did. Since those 
prison-days, time has been busy filling in the 
roofless ten acres, till now the village path through 
the walls is within a few feet of the top of the 
towers. Probably when Lady Pelham chewed her 
goose-quill and gazed out of window-slits med- 
itating how to spell her letter to her " Lordes hie 
worschippe," she sat a hundred feet or more 
below the sodden path where, from a continent 
she never heard of, certain Americans passed 
and fancied they could teach her. 

" The insolence of thinking to teach a valiant 
dame who taught a king bitter knowledge, that 
' yhowr avvnn pore I Pelham ' is not the latest style 
in the adjustment of letters," retorted one of them 
to the other. " Don't tell me that correct spelling 
is not vulgar, the trick of schoolmarms and proof- 
readers ! Chaucer's spelling was entirely Chau- 
cerian ; Goethe blundered as he pleased ; Swift 
allowed Stella twenty misspellings in one letter. 
Neither Romney, George Morland, nor Turner could 
spell ; Monk and Marlborough spelled fortuitously ; 



HIRED FURNISHED. 13 

Washington put as many ;2's as he pleased in his 
ginn ; Queens Mary and Anne spelled in true 
Stuart fashion ; Victoria is by no means always vul- 
garly correct ; no king of England and no hero has 
ever spelled as correctly as a board school-mistress. 
Then think of Jane Austen with her ' arraroot/ her 
'■ neice/ and ' tomatas.' Don t tell me — ^^ 
" I won't, " said he. 

Pevensey has had distinguished visitors that have 
not been prisoners. The house is here in which tra- 
dition says the original of all Merrie Andrews was 
born. Tradition insists that not only here he was 
born, but that in the very next parish was the 
Gotham of which he wrote merry tales. Dr. Andrew 
Boorde is usually spoken of as physician to Henry 
Eighth. His name appears in no household books 
of the Court, and the only authority for such courtly 
association is his own word that he '* waited on the 
King." Tradition represents him as a sort of six- 
teenth century bohemian, seeing many countries 
and many men, loving flesh and wine, or living 
upon " a peny worth of whyte bread a hoole weeke," 
and finding it enough for an honest man " unless 
he be a raveneur." Boorde began as a Carthusian 
monk, but he was unable to bear the " rigouosity 
of the religion," and became a physician and a 
very roaming one, as is shown by his own writings. 
" I have travelyd specially about Europe and part 
of Affrycke throwow and round about Christen- 
dome," he wrote. Tradition says that he fre- 
quented markets and country fairs, haranguing 
crowds, disposing of his remedies and enlarging 
his practice by his drolleries and buffoonery, thus 
becoming known as '' Merrie Andrew " and the 



14 HIRED FURNISHED. 

original of whole generations of " Merrie Andrews " 
who were the companions and allies of quack 
doctors and mountebanks. Sussex tradition insists 
that here in Pevensey he wrote the " Merrie Tales 
of the Wise Men of Gotham " that have been 
printed with his name ever since his own century. 
It says that he was not on good terms with the 
village authorities, and that he wrote ostensibly 
about those " foles of Gottam," while really ridicul- 
ing certain known actions of their own. That he 
owned a house here is not tradition, for he gave 
away " my house in Pemsy " by his will. Neither 
is it traditional that he roved in many countries, 
"in divers countries by the practyce of physyck 
for his sustentaysion," a profession which certainly 
requires stability of position for success, unless it be 
a bohemian success of a " Merrie Andrew." An 
editor of Early English text, Mr. Furnivall, one 
of the most amiable natural dispositions and the 
very most cantankerous literary temper, denies with 
asperity everything that tradition says. Not the 
Gotham of Sussex was meant, says ]\Ir. Furnivall, 
but probably the Gotham of Nottinghamshire, 
renowned for the foolishness of its inhabitants, and 
Dr. Boorde never wrote the tales. He repudiates 
the idea that Boorde ever frequented country fairs 
and made himself a '' Merrie Andrew." But as 
the Early English Text Society can substitute 
nothing definite for tradition ; as it can draw its 
inferences only from other of Boorde's writings 
(very vague inferences they are) ; as it is compelled 
to acknowledge that he died in the Fleet (as rovers 
so often have died), and cannot tell why ; as it can- 
not even tell when or where he was born (except 
that he was born in Sussex) ; in fact, as it does not 



HIRED FURNISHED. I 5 

disprove the Merrie Andrew tradition to any other 
satisfaction than its own, — all who love tradition 
have every right still to believe that Andrew Boorde 
was a roving and a Merrie Andrew, "a lewd and 
ungratious pre'st " (priest), as he was written down 
thirty years after his death, and given to wine and 
wantoning, alternating with hair shirt and cold- 
water penance, just as the bohemian poet, Paul 
Verlaine, was wont to alternate, and many another 
besides King David. 

Mr. Furnivall would argue that a man who 
wrote piously must be pious, and a man who 
was pious could not be a Merrie Andrew or write 
the Merrie Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham. 
King David was the author of the Psalms, yet King 
David's private hfe was not set to the tune of Old 
Hundred. As for the Sussex Gotham, the name 
still adheres to a land and the site of a manor near 
Pevensey; and Sussex, Boorde's own country, is 
notoriously "Silly Sussex" in parts to this day. 
The marshy soil, horrible roads or rather no roads, 
so deep with " my re and dyrt " that so late as the 
last century people have gone to church drawn by 
oxen, made travelling almost impossible. Villages 
lived entirely by themselves, without acquaintance 
with other villages but a few miles away, which were 
considered "furrin parts." A Sussex man once 
returned to his native hamlet saying that he was 
" tired of furrin parts." He had been six months 
in a village sixteen miles distant from his own. 
Under such conditions there was constant inter- 
marrying within a limited circle, and this going on 
for generations with the natural result, the "foles of 
Gottam," as well as the Silliness of Sussex generally. 

The Americans, after examination of both sides 



1 6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

of the question, decided to accept Tradition's say 
of Andrew Boorde, finding that say so much the 
more interesting and picturesque, although not 
even Tradition would tell them why so clever a 
man, and one with other houses to will away besides 
this one in Pemsy, died in the Fleet. 

" A very wise man," remarked the lady. 
" ' Beate her nat/ Boorde advised husbands con- 
cerning their wives." 

'' Did he not say * God made her subject to 
man?'" observed the other Villain. "What did 
that mean but a right to beat her at discretion?" 

" He wrote, ' Let every man please his wife and 
displease her not,'" recited Mistress Villain much 
as if reading from notes, " ' but let her have her 
owne wyl for that she wyl have, who-so-ever say 
nay.' Bless his merry old soul! How modern 
he was for an age we consider barbaric ! ' Homo 
is the Latin word,' he says, ' and in Englyshe it is 
as wel for a woman as for a man, but woman is a 
man in wo, and set wo before man and then it is 
woman, and wel she may be named a wo-vi\2^w, 
for as muche as she doth bear chyldren with wo 
and peyn.' Imagine him," she continued, " stand- 
ing on a cart surrounded by gaping yokels, a 
close-shaven man like a monk, wearing a httle 
cap and one straight stiff feather, with woollen 
hosen to his waist, and under his ordinary short 
cotes a petycote of scarlet to keep his stomach 
from ' croaking,' and over all a doctor's long cloak 
or robe. Lnagine him selling his cures, and tell- 
ing those Tudoresque Englishmen that ' the 
woman is subject to the man except when the 
white mare is the better horse.' " 



HIRED FURNISHED. 1 7 

That same evening, with feet on the fender, as 
they spun their usual fancies both bUthe and 
pensive, they managed between them to enrich 
Enghsh literature with rhymes in remembrance 
of Merrie Andrew Boorde. 

THE LOST BROTHER. 

Seven Wise Men of Gotham were they, 

Yet none too wise to unbend to play, 

When the sun was hot and fields scorched brown, 

And nothing whatever was doing in town, 

And the river ran near and wimpled cool, 

And rested in many a placid pool, 

To tempt those men from sordid toil, 

From the stewing streets and the August broil. 

To bathe fevered frames in limpid shade 

And find failing forces thus remade. 

So the Wise Men started by dawn's first light. 
Having for fear of not rising sat up all night, 
And soon the whole seven were cucumbery cool, 
Immersed to their necks in a slumbery pool. 

" Ah ha ! " cried a Wise Man, pulling on his hose, 

** How lucky we are no one of us to lose 

In those fathomless depths whence we all emerge 

And whose raging billows might have wailed our dirge ! " 

( The fathomless depths were two feet deep, 

And their rippleless surface smiled in its sleep.) 

" Are you sure ? " asked another in mild surprise. 

" We were Seven at starting, if I trust my own eyes 

Now I see only Six, and does not that show 

That one of us lies in those fell depths below ? " 

(The Wise Man in counting saw each of the others, 

But forgot to count himself among all his brothers.) 

'■'■ You 're right ! " cried the others, after horrified pause 

And each counting himself in oblivious clause, 

" We 're but Six, as is plain ; at dawn we were more, 

So surely our brother has ne 'er come to shore. 

Ah ! How can we bear that dear brother to lose, 

Or how carry home the dolorous news 

2 



1 8 HIKED FURNISHED. 

To weeping aunts, sisters, cousins, and mothers, 

Widows, orphans, relations-by-marriage, and brothers ? 

How can we endure that dear brother to lose, 

Not the best of us worthy to tie up his shoes ? 

He surely was wisest and best of us Seven, 

For of such is always the Kingdom of Heaven ! " 

So they wept and wailed with clam'rous refrain. 

Then by fits and by starts they counted again ; 

But always forgetting that each counter was one, 

Came always to same number when the counting was done. 

Their grief grew tremendous, and its clamour rose high, 

Thus attracting attention from a man riding by, 

Who stopped his old horse to demand all the whys 

That the day should be rent by such hideous cries. 

" Our brother ! Our brother ! " was all they could say ; 

" We were Seven at dawn, we 're but Six at mid-day. 

We 'v.e counted ourselves a dozen times round. 

And always the Six reiterated found. 

The Seventh is missing, hence the truth is quite plain 

We shall never see our dear brother again." 

" Gad ! If a Seventh you want," cried the man in amaze, 

" I'll make you remember where he is, all your days ! " 

Then he gave one a lash with miglit and with main, 

And the Wise Man yelped like a bulldog in pain. 

" You 're One ! " said tlie lasher, to which lashed agreed. 

" You 're Two ! " and the second was lashed twice with speed. 

" You We T/wee, and yoti ''re Four, yoii ''re Five, and you ''re Six : 

You '11 remember your numbers by the number of licks." 

Then — with lash more cutting than ever — " You ''re SEVEN ; 

Thus you see you 're not yet of the Kingdom of Heaven ! " 

The Seven howled together with agonized glee, 

Thus suddenly restored their dead brother to see. 

'' God bless you ! " they chorussed, all prancing with pain, 

" But for you we should never have been Seven again ! " 

" Quite equal to Wordsworth's ' We are Seven,' " 
said one of them. And the other agreed. 

Pevensey Bay is not picturesque, but what care 
they for picturesqueness, the twinkhng, twittering, 



HIRED FURNISHED. 1 9 

fleeting hordes for whose pleasure its exists? It 
is a cheap bathing place, made cheap b}^ its total 
lack of natural beauty ; where children dig all 
day in the summer sands, and bathing costumes 
dash from bedrooms straight into the water and 
drippingly back again. A constant succession of 
short holiday folk, shopkeepers, and office clerks 
and their famihes, dashes through the hamlet 
during "the season," few remaining more than a 
week or two at a time, and all leaving more or less, 
generally more, of havoc and smash behind them. 
The Americans needed not to ask who nipped the 
teapot's nose and lost the stove lid-lifter, and cork- 
screwed the poker, and robbed the oven of all its 
grates, and lost every key to cupboards and chests 
of drawers, and broke the thermometer's back and 
the spirit of all the upholstery in the villa except 
of the beds, which were perfect, even luxurious, as 
English beds always are. They needed not to 
ask concerning the brief summer tenant. 

Evidently the villa gave outward signs of the 
warm life within, for they all came, butcher, baker, 
milkman, grocer, from Pevensey beyond the marsh 
(pardon, beyond the Level). Even the sewing- 
machine man came, two of him for every week 
they stayed, and ten machines the lady waved 
away, — the first with mildness, the last without. 
Every day came the rosy maid whom they named 
" Ivy Leaf," so perennially fresh, so full of sturdy 
life she seemed, however the wind blew, the snow 
flew, whatever the wild waves were saying. Every 
morning she came from a market garden in 
'^ Pemsy " with her brilliant complexion not even 
suggestive of blousiness, not even of a " cabbage " 
rose, but of wild pink roses blowing over a dis- 



20 HIRED FURNISHED. 

taut hedge, with the most cooing, winning voice 
in the world, a pretty accent, every h in its place, 
and an enormous basket from which one might 
select the order to come later. She went to every 
house in the hamlet every day of the year. " She 's 
been offered any price to go to London with 
summer visitors for child's nurse," said Mrs. 
Pumpkin-Hood, " but she likes this business 
better." 

The Americans found that even nicked cups 
and saucers, scarred platters, and a wounded tea- 
pot need to be washed after use, the mattresses to 
be turned every day, and then the dreadful ashes ! 

Likewise the more dreadful shoes. 

An old adage names " Sowsexe full of dyrt and 
myre," and a writer so late as 17 71 facetiously, 
asks, "Why is it the oxen, the swine, the women, 
and all other animals are so long-legged in Sussex ? 
May it be from the difficulty of pulKng the feet 
out of so much mud by the strength of the ankle 
that the muscles get stretched, as it were, and the 
bones lengthened?" 

"What a swinish advantage," she remarked. 
"Women are the only animals obliged to keep 
their feet clean. Don't tell jne that women are not 
shamefully put upon — don't tell me — " 

" I won't," said he. 

"To be sure," said Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, "there's 
the Widow Rogers who will take your washing 
home. She will be thankful to do everything in the 
forenoon except cooking, for four shillings a week." 

Which the Widow Rogers did do, and perfectly, 
so that the Pemsy Villains were as independent 
of coals, ashes, and mud as Sussex swine or oxen. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 21 

When the laundry basket came home the first 
time, — "Are you taking a nap?" he called from 
the sitting-room. 

" I 'm not snoring ! " came the indignant answer 
from the kitchen. " I 'm only smiling over the 
disappearance of London fog from the clothes ! " 

The dinners of these Villains came at night. 
Digestion waits better upon appetite after the 
brain's work is done for the day. The Mistress 
Villain prepared joints and vegetables herself; the 
sweets and deserts came from Pemsy shops or 
were brought home from Eastbourne or Hastings, 
where English plum pudding may be bought 
by the yard, or mile, and steamed, resteamed, re- 
re-steamed, so long as an inch of it is left. Mince 
pies too, the size of an American jam tart and 
entirely of fruit without admixture of meat, were 
perennially fresh by means of a tiny tin oven 
fitted to an oil lamp ( Mem. The lady had written 
" Never hire furnished without my oil lamp and 
oven " ). 

" We are in the very heart of the H topsey- 
turveyism, I mean the very 'art of it," said one of 
them, '■ yet Sussex speaks English, antique Enghsh, 
and it says pie for pie just as we do in America, 
and not tart for pie as London does." 

" Just so," said the other of them. '' Sometimes 
these Sussex expressions make me wonder for a 
moment how this ' strong Saxon English,' as they 
call it, ever became so ^ Americanized.' We both 
thought at first that yesterday's landlady was 
speaking American when she said the table was 
* out of kilter,' yet an old Sussex benefaction left 
money to keep the parson's breeches from getting 
'out of kilter.' Londoners sometimes smiled at 



22 HIRED FURNISHED. 

our use of the word ' crock/ yet the Sussex proverb 
tells that at the rainbow's end is a crock of gold, 
not a pot." 

" When I was a child in my native Maine, we 
were very funny when we dialogued ' Wat 's your 
name?' ' Pudden tame;' yet here in Sussex the 
dialogue is ancient, and the answer * Pudden 
ta'em ' means either ' pudding at home," or as 
wiser ones say, '■ pudding and a broach,' or a 
draught of beer. We sometimes added, ' Wat 's 
your nater ?' and answered ' Pudden-tater ; ' but 
that addition was undoubtedly of our new world." 

But apropos of these dinners. These i\mer- 
icans knew the bloom and the beauty of Califor- 
nia fruit even when imprisoned in tin. One 
morning the lady of the villa added to her order 
for the day, '' and a tin of peaches." The gro- 
cer's grin was wider than Mercutio's wound, for it 
was as wide as a church door. 

" You 've 'ad 'em hall ! 'Ave sent for more," 
he remarked. 

With books and work and healthful play the 
days flew by on wings. They were calm, still days, 
with that dehcate sunshine Americans never see 
in their own startling land, the golden light soft- 
ened by transparent mists, as a girl's blushes 
by her bridal veil. Sussex " dyrt and myre " was 
sticky but not deep, although too much so for 
bicycling, so they trotted many miles instead of 
rolling them, and almost buried Mrs. Rogers in 
her native soil. 

One day it might be Battle Abbey where the 
Conqueror willed that prayers should forever be 
offered up for the souls of those who had fallen in 



HIRED FURNISHED. 23 

the memorable conflict, prayers forever before the 
high altar erected on the very spot where Harold's 
standard had waved. '' Perpetual prayer ! " what 
a mockery ! What a mockery is " perpetual " 
anything in a world that never for an instant rests 
from perpetual change ! Now the original abbey 
is level with the ground, and only the site exists 
of the high altar, where no prayers are said unless 
the sightseer includes one with his sixpence to 
the guide. 

The present Battle Abbey is a ducal dwelling 
shown to hoy polloy on certain days of the week. 
It is said to be haunted, not as one would sup- 
pose by mailed knights, but by a nameless old 
woman of weird and terrible aspect. 

" Do you ever see a weird old woman in the 
grounds?" a lady asked the guide. 

" Her Grace the Duchess," he answered. 
Evidently "weird" was too much for him. 

Sometimes it was a walk to Beachy Head, where 
in 1690 *' the English got one of the very few 
lickings they ever got not administered by us," 
remarked a Pevensey Villain, with filial pride in 
a parent hard to lick. Other times quaint bits of 
Sussex architecture embedded in " restorations " 
lured them for miles, or a storied castle, an his- 
toric manor, a quaint churchyard, even once a 
search for the grave in which a queer corpse was 
buried. At the funeral of a renowned smuggler 
a mysterious tall stranger in a cloak stood by the 
grave. When the coffin was lowered he ex- 
claimed, " I am not there ! " with which quite 
unnecessary remark he disappeared. A century 
afterwards the coffin was found to hold only 
stones. "The man didn't gain much," they 



24 HIRED FURNISHED. 

agreed. " His own coffin by that time held 
less." 

Dehghtful beyond description to walk in rustic 
England even in winter, for one may scarce walk a 
mile anywhere without coming upon some relic 
of ages past^ some shrine of poetic history, some 
ruined temple of forgotten fame, some broken 
altar of faith, or some ghost of romantic art. 
Besides, there are always exquisite pictures of true 
English farmhouses and cottages, old when our 
Declaration of Independence was new, some older 
than the history of Plymouth Rock ; houses 
wrapped in living green, with low hanging eaves 
and massive skeletons showing through solid walls. 
No one was like another, and every one they saw 
between Pevensey and Herstmonceaux Castle they 
vowed was more antique, more picturesque, more 
utterly, unspeakably enchanting than all the rest. 

" Ah ! this is poetry ! This is what it is to 
live r^ quoth she, wiping the mud from her Eng- 
lish boots on the wayside grass. 

They were English boots and no mistake. 
Nowhere on this rolling globe could they ever be 
mistaken for anything else. They were as solid 
as iron, and as impervious to water or dampness as 
a man-of-war. They were laced in front high up the 
leg, they had Jacobean gables for toes ; they en- 
dured for years, and they cost three dollars. Ugly? 
Yea, verily, they were of unmitigated, absolute 
hideousness, in which a number three foot made 
tracks whereby scientists might imagine to follow 
some extinct mammoth. They however did per- 
fectly all they were bought to do, — kept the feet 
warm and dry whatever the road, for ever so 
" tidy " a walk. In New England's ice and snow 



HIRED FURNISHED. 25 

they would be worse than useless, would keep the 
wearer oftener on her shoulderblades than her 
heels, because of their stiff-soled slipperiness. In 
all her years in England this American never wore 
out a pair of galoshes, and on their winter tramps 
and summer mountain climbs " Stumpity-Thump " 
her companion named the occupant of those iron- 
bound, Jacobean gables. 

Poetry ? Pages, volumes of it ; volumes which 
included lunches of bread and cheese in wayside 
inns, and afternoon tea in another inn miles nearer 
their hired-furnished. And such tea ! " Shall we 
ever be able to drink the concoction we call tea 
at home ? " they wondered, as in the humblest of 
parlors they drank at sixpence apiece elixir that 
ought to make any mandarin purr and prattle ; 
elixir that slid divinely over the tongue to mount 
to the brain, to descend to the heart, to rummage 
through all the veins and make the drinkers rise to 
Olympian heights of bliss and power. " Now I 
understand Hazlitt's intemperance," one said, and 
the other agreed. " I never could understand it 
before I came to England." 

Hazlitt was really a tea-drunkard, and weaned 
himself from brandy by its means. He would sit 
for hours over his strong, black tea, silent and 
motionless as a Turk over his opium, for tea served 
him precisely in that capacity. He was very par- 
ticular about the quality of his tea, using the most 
expensive he could get, and when alone consumed 
nearly a pound a week. He always made it him- 
self, half filling the pot with tea, pouring boihng 
water upon it, and almost immediately pouring it 
out. So fascinating to him was his beloved tipple, 
so deep the blissful peace into which it threw him 



26 HIRED FURNISHED. 

for the time, that not even the intrusion of a dun, 
to which he was at other times so abnormally 
sensitive, could wrest him from his repose. When 
he died he said, " I have had a happy life," and 
must thus have remembered only his tea-happy 
hours. For otherwise he was very miserable. 
Unhappy with his two wives, he tormented himself 
with a foolish passion for a lodging-house keeper's 
daughter; was in money difficulties at times, and 
in the bitterest of literary and political quarrels. 
Evidently tea washed all those hateful memories 
away. De Quincey also was excessively fond of 
tea ; Shelley was an inveterate tea-drinker. What 
miles of poetry and prose Englishmen have written 
about tea, beginning with Waller, who pleased 
the tea-drinking spouse of Charles Second with a 
sonnet declaring that — 

" Venus her Myrtle, PhcEbus has his bays, 
Tea both excels," 

and continuing — 

" The Muses' friend, Tea doth our fancy aid, 
Repress those vapours which the head invade, 
And keep the palace of the soul serene." 

Very early in the history of tea Englishmen 
recognized it as a brain-elixir, softly thrilling the 
nerves to lyre-like trembling, bringing out whatever 
of music was in the instrument, an seolian quiver 
quite different from the vibrant effect of coffee. 

Poor forgotten Nahum Tate wrote a poem, 
"Panacea," about 1700 to represent all the divini- 
ties contending for the honor of standing as god- 
parent to tea, which honor finally fell to Phoebus. 
An Anglicized Frenchman, Pierre Motteux, wrote 



HIRED FURNISHED. 2/ 

another recommending tea to all who exercise 
their brain, to all who would 

" On soaring wings of contemplation rise 
And fetch discov'ries from the skies ; 
Ethereal Tea your natures will refine 
Till you yourselves become almost divine." 

They all unite in singing it the Phoebean drink, 
even though we know that Ben Jonson never put 
a teacup to his sack-swilling lips ; that Shake- 
speare never heard of the Phoebean elixir, or any 
other of the stalwart Elizabethans. 

" ' And I remember,' said the sober Mouse, 
* I 've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee House.' 
' Thither,' said Bundle, ' you shall go and see 
Priests sipping Coffee, and Poets Tea.'' " 

Writers rapidly multiplied in England after tea 
became a popular drink, doubtless because so 
many more brains were clear than when sack was 
man's beverage morning, noon, and night. They 
were not of the Elizabethan breed of writers, but 
they wrote, and in time a tea-ful printer set the 
world agog with fiction that could never have 
been nourished on pipe and bottle, yet that made 
many a pipe and bottle man weep. 

" Exactly, " said one of them ; " we have just 
been reading the diary of tippling Thomas Turner, 
a Sussex tradesman of one hundred and forty 
years ago, who sobbed between his cups (not 
of tea). ' My wife read to me that moving scene 
of the funeral of Miss Clarissa Harlowe. Oh may 
the Supreme Being give me grace to lead my life 
in such a manner as my exit may in some measure 
be like that divine creature's ! ' " 



28 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Hartley Coleridge asked somebody to " Inspire 
my genius and my tea infuse," as if the two easily 
went together, and wrote, — 

" And I who always keep the golden mean, 
Have just declined my seventh cup of green." 

Shelley wrote of it, — 

" The liquor doctors rail at, and that I 
Will quaff in spite of them, and when I die 
We '11 toss up which died first of drinking tea." 

" Shall we have another sixpen'orth ? " asked 
the lady. 

" It is to be noticed that no American, distin- 
guished or otherwise, has ever been an excessive 
tea-drinker, such as Dr. Johnson, for instance, 
who declared himself a hardened tea-drinker 
whose kettle never has time to get cold ; as for 
women — " 

"And gossip?" interrupted the other. "The 
moment one speaks of women and tea in the same 
sentence I know that ' gossip ' will follow. Some 
people never can say ' Margaret ' without ' rare 
pale,' or mention an underdone joint without 
bringing in poor old Ben Jonson, or a day in 
June. Don't tell me that men are not the great- 
est gossips in the world ! Was not Plutarch a 
lively old gossip as well as Herodotus? The 
author of the 'Memoirs of de Grammont' said 
'The Duke of Buckingham was the father and 
mother of Scandal.' 

" Anatomy-of-Melancholy Burton, before he 
knew tea (if ever he knew it), wrote, ' Our 
gentry — their sole discourse is hawks, horses, 
dogs, and what neivs.^ Pepys, Swift (to Stella), 
Boswell, were kings of gossip. Was ever a better 



HIRED FURNISHED. 29 

description than Leigh Hunt's of tea-scorning 
Walpole's gossip, ' the perpetual squeak of its 
censoriousness?' Lady Blessington wrote that 
Lord Byron was very fond of gossiping ; any httle 
bit of scandal amused him very much. When 
she remarked this to him one day he laughed 
and said, ' Don't you know the elephant's trunk 
can take up the most ponderous things and the 
most minute? I do like a little scandal, I 
think all Enghsh people do.' Then there was 
Keats, a very apothecary except for his genius, 
who when speaking of ' personal talk ' said, ' I 
must confess to rather of an itch for it myself.' 
None of these gossips drank tea. Byron, Keats, 
and Walpole airily sneered at it ; Swift wrote 
superciliously against it ; the others did not 
know it. 

" Neither Tea nor Woman is really responsible 
for Scandal. ' Slanderynge coramythe of a dronkon 
hede,' the Goode Wyfe taught her daughter about 
1460." 

" Yes, let us have two six-pennorth," said he. 

Thus the two Villains chatted over their cups 
in dusky inn parlors, where floors were often tiled, 
sunken, and bare, walls heavy and low, and those 
'' cups " more like the " dish " of ye olden time 
than those with which they were familiar, yet 
would they not change with tealess occupants of 
thrones. 

Why did our ancestors even down to our own 
century so often say, " Drink a dish," where we 
more daintily " take a cup " ? Was it that the 
'' new China Drink " of which Pepys wrote coldly 
in 1660, found " cup" already wedded to "sack," 
and a vessel not delicate enough to receive the 



30 HIRED FURNISHED. 

costly beverage ? When the Oriental leaf was sold 
in London at sixty shillings, or fifteen dollars, the 
pound, and the liquid made from it taxed at eight- 
pence the gallon in coffee-houses, scarce wonder 
the coarse cup, boon companion with roaring 
sack, was considered unfit for the elixir dealt out 
of teapots holding half a pint, into measures 
scarcely more than a tablespoonful. Even so late 
as 1 703, Counsellor Burrill in Sussex recorded in 
his Journal as a valuable gift the three-quarters of 
an ounce of Te he gave away. The year after 
Pepys' " Cup of Tee., a new China Drink of which 
I never drank before," that is, the second year of 
the Restoration, the landlady in Dryden's "Wild 
Gallants " loudly complained, — 

^' And your Worship came home ill {dninJz) 
last night, and your head was bad, and I did send 
for three dishes of tea for your Worship, and that 
was sixpence." Sixpences in those days were as 
large as " dishes " were small, and the cost of the 
new drink excuses the character in one of those 
old plays who " will get the tea ready and boyl it 
a long time." Sir Kenelm Digby's "recetes" of 
only a few years later teach a better course than 
to " boyl a long time," although his "recete " is still 
of huge economy, less than one " dram " of the 
leaves to a pint of water. " In these parts," he 
wrote, " we let the hot water remain too long 
soaking upon the Tea. The water is to remain 
upon it no longer than the whiles you can say the 
Miserere Psalm very leisurely." 

" Cup " was not in fashionable use much before 
the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, " that 
hoop-and-teacup-time." Then Pope and Cowper^ 
the teacup poets par excellence, never use any- 



HIRED FURNISHED. 3 I 

thing else, " dish " by that time having fallen low 
in the world. 

The new " China Drink," which was first named 
in English literature as a medicine for tipsiness 
(Pepys had no thought of literature), long held 
that poor reputation. Quite naturally, too, it was 
very early recognized as fit drink of the Muses in 
place of wine, ''which hath heat without light." 

Dr. Ovington, a court chaplain to Queen Mary 
of Orange, named it '■'■Anti-Circe inasmuch as it 
counter-charms the enchanted Cup and changes 
the Beast into a Man." 

"When the tea is brought in," says Sir John 
Brute, in the " Provoked Wife," " I drink twelve 
regular dishes." Sir John was a man of headachy 
mornings, being " drunk ten times in a fortnight ; " 
therefore even so late as his day (1694), those 
twelve tiny dishes must have been a dose. It was 
so considered evidently by that rough cavalier, 
General Blunt, in Shadwell's " Stockjobbers." 
Major-General Blount said of the tea-table, " 'T is 
ready for the Women and Men who live like 
AVomen ; adod, your fine-bred Men of England 
as they call 'em are all turned Women, but by my 
Troth, I '11 not turn my Back to the Pipe and 
Bottle after Dinner." 

Shadwell's " Stockjobbers " is interesting as 
containing the first mention of tea-tables., and also 
as evidence that the modern lady's " day " is no 
new thing. Eugenia, who is described as " a very 
fine young lady," the reverse of her sister Teresia, 
who is " a foolish, conceited, affected young Lady," 
exclaims, " Who that has the Sense of Vertue could 
endure the piteous Dullness of new Plays, the 
most provoking Impertinences of how-do-you 's 



32 HIRED FURNISHED. 

and Visiting Days with Tea Tables ! " Evidently 
Eugenia was " fine " in the sense of being sensible, 
and regarding visiting days and tea-tables from the 
masculine or " dosed " point of view. Yet its his- 
tory shows that tea has been almost the best friend 
the Englishwoman has ever had. 

" If you please," says Touchwood, in the 
" Double-Dealer," exactly two hundred years ago, 
— " if you please, we will retire to the ladies, and 
drink a dish of tea to settle our heads." 

Tea was a "settler." It "settled" the "Rake- 
hells " till not one is now to be found in decent 
English society. It " setded " the Sir John Brutes 
till not one such dare show his head among visit- 
ing days and tea-tables. It "settled" the tea- 
table, too, on foundations deep in our civilization, 
binding families, communities, nations together in 
pleasantness and peace. Before tea came, Eng- 
land had only its heavy dinner-table, laden with 
strong meats and stronger drinks. There was no 
breakfast-table, no pleasant centre for afternoon 
tea. All through the seventeenth-century dram- 
atists are mentions of breakfast, but never of a 
breakfast-/^/^/^. The morning meal was then not 
much more than the ten-o'clock drink, a sop or 
a bite with it. The family did not gather de- 
cently together to the silvery tinkle of teaspoons, 
the chime of dainty china cups, the hum of lucid 
conversation. 

Sir William Davenant's description of a lady's 
tealess and tableless breakfast is enough to make 
all the world of womankind feel closely akin to 
Lady Gentle in Colley Gibber's "Wife's Resent- 
ment." 

Sings Davenant : — 



HIRED FURNISHED. 33 

" Arise, arise ! Your breakfast stays, — 
Good water, gruel warm. 
Or sugar sops, which Galen says 
With mace will do no harm. 
Arise, arise 1 when you are up 
You '11 find your draught in caudle cup, 
Good nut-brown ale and toast." 

From caudle cups and morning draught of ale, 
tea has delivered England, even if it has devel- 
oped the traditional old ladies who make their 
living by taking tea at each others houses. 

" Tea," exclaims Colley Gibber's Lady Gentle, — 
" Tea, thou soft, thou sober, sage and venerable 
liquor, thou innocent pretext for bringing the 
wicked of both sexes together on a morning, thou 
female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- 
opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious 
insipidity I owe the happiest moments of my life, 
,let me fall prostrate and adore Thee." 

Then she falls upon her knees, and from her 
" dish " sips loudly, as nineteenth century Lady 
Gentles do not from modern " cups." 

When originated the popular superstition which 
links Tea and Gossip together? Who first put into 
print that the musical jingle of silver, the dainty 
tumult of china, the fragrant steam of teapots, was 
a necromantic spell to set tongues awag? Who 
in English literature not only recognized the 
potency of the spell, but slandered the character 
of the wagging? Who was first to make a com- 
mon-place of " Tea and Gossip ? " Naturally it 
was some man. The words still retain their 
ancient echo of a gruff voice. It was some man 
of a century in which only despised Woman loved 
tea, and arrogant Man did not. Quite as naturally 
it was some poet or dramatist, for in poems and 

3 



34 HIRED FURNISHED. 

plays are imbedded the pearls and pebbles of 
other times, so often to become the traditions and 
superstitions of our own. " Every woman is at 
heart a rake/' has jaundiced many a man's vision 
who never read a word of Pope. Without so 
much as a dream of the manner of our century, 
Shakespeare has fitted it with sayings for its every 
day's doings. 

Pipe and bottle were not conducive to the 
wagging of tongues. One closed the mouth, the 
other clogged the wits, and oftener under the din- 
ner-table than at the tea-table the Blunts were 
found. Now we see that tea was a silly woman- 
drink, beloved of chatterers with fancy aided by 
it, and souls made serene rather than muddled. 
What wonder that women wagged their tongues 
over dainty cups and tinkling silver, while their 
trencher-men lords piped, swilled, and snored ! 

At the end of the seventeenth century, or nearly 
half a century after elegant Waller's apostrophe to 
Tea, Congreve's " Way of the World " took an 
even more modern view of " that best of herbs " 
of which Waller wrote. Tea was now rapidly 
permeating England. The tea-table was a recog- 
nized feature of society. In "The Way of the 
World " Millament insists to Mirabell that she 
" be sole Empress of my Tea Table, which you 
must never presume to approach without asking 
leave." With characteristic insolence those silly 
women had taken the tea-table as their very 
own, that same tea-table to which pipe and bottle 
had exiled them. In Congreve's play Mirabell 
answers : '' To the dominion of the Tea Table I 
submit — but with proviso that you exceed not in 
your province but restrain yourself to genuine and 



HIRED FURNISHED. 35 

authorized Tea Table talk — such as mending of 
fasliions, spoiling reputations, railing at absent 
friends, and so forth." 

We have him ! Congreve is the slanderer, — 
Congreve, whose plays are full of wine-bibbing male 
tattlers, backbiters, scandal-mongers, who even 
names some of his men " Scandal " and " Tattle " 
and never gives them a cup of tea ! Again in 
the "Double Dealer," Congreve makes Mille- 
fond answer Careless's question, " Where are the 
women ? I 'm weary of guzzling and begin to 
think them better company," with " Then thy 
reason staggers, and thou 'rt drunk ; " adding after- 
wards, " Why, they are retired to Tea and Scandal 
according to their ancient custom." 

After this the deluge ! The poets, than whom in 
the nineteenth century none are more given to the 
five o'clock cup, scarce mention tea without the 
companionship of scandal, or its meeker sister gossip. 
They are all men-poets, Mrs. Browning with her, 

" Then helps to sugar her bohea at night 
With your reputation," 

being almost the only woman who does so, and 
she only in one specified instance, not generally 
and sweepingly, after the manner of men. Indeed, 
by the eighteenth century it became a literary and 
social convention to unite the two, and quite inde- 
pendent of one's own observation and belief, as 
we speak of the rising and setting sun, knowing 
perfectly that there is no such thing in creation. 

Pope, however, in the eighteenth century recog- 
nized the much-maligned elixir as of balmy and 
amiable effect. He makes Lovet say, " Now stop 
complaining and come to Tea." Cowper, too. 



3 6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

was the poet of the tea-table in its more humane 
and natural aspect, and without the hateful ac- 
complice Slander seen by so many other poets, — 
" the cup that cheers,'" etc. 

Tea has had to suffer for keeping bad company. 
For women are bad, as most poets and play- 
wrights know, — have been bad ever since Eve 
ate the apple. It was for woman exclusively that 
the ninth commandment was given, it was for 
women that Christ spoke the Golden Rule ; Judas 
must have been a woman in disguise. Woman is 
the sinner, Tea the innocent sufferer. For long 
before tea entered Europe, poets and playwrights 
knew women to live not by bread, but by gossip 
and scandal. When women were not bright 
enough to do much in the gossiping-Pepys and 
scandal-mongering Horace Walpole way, they 
were such women as Sir William Davenant de- 
scribed (/<?^less women), — 

" — dull country Madames 
That spend their time in studying receipts to make 
Marchpane and preserve plums ; that talk 
Of painful child-birth, servant's wages, 
Their husband's good complexion, and his leg." 

"Don't tell me!^^ said she. "Don't tell me 
that tea has not done Christian Service in civiHz- 
ing humanity. It has turned drunken man's 
scandal into woman's dainty gossip. Don't tell 
me I " 

" I won't," said he. 

Often the Villains enticed the landlady into a 
chat even while regretting that Sussex landladies 
are not " buxom," as story-landladies usually are, 



HIRED FURNISHED. 3/ 

and from her beguiled many a quaint form of 
Sussex speech or scraps of neighborhood or family 
history, — " gossip " perhaps. 

It might be the gossip of the old rector's ap- 
proaching marriage with the Lady Faire, whose 
heart was buried in a sHm curate's grave years 
ago. And the story of her beauty as she rode 
to hounds when Bretomhurst had another mis- 
tress than now, and the country-side was brilliant 
with scarlet coats. One of their gossips was twin 
maidens of seventy years, so much alike that the 
Villains can never tell if one they saw or two. 
They wore gray ringlets hanging both sides of 
their ruddy faces, with much beribboned caps, and 
massive gold chains round their neck and across 
black alpaca breasts. For the first few. times 
they did not show themselves to the strangers, 
but sent their niece, a village maid with townish 
ideas of dress, who always referred to them as 
one indivisible person named " harnts." " Harnts 
was sure the lady's feet were damp, and would 
she take hoff her shoes to be dried in harnts' 
happartment ? " 

" Harnts could send them some butter-toast if 
they preferred it with their tea." When the tea 
and toast were consumed " Harnts oped they were 
pleased with their tea," which they decidedly 
were. Other times harnts themselves brought in 
the tea, a special honor, — one bearing the tray, the 
other the loaf, from which in England the luncher 
always serves himself. Harnts were chatty ; they 
wondered anybody should wish to find stocks and 
a whipping-post, but directed how to discover them 
a tidy walk away — they never had seen Lady 
Pelham, although they had lived under that roof 



38 HIRED FURNISHED. 

ail their lives, and never could marry because 
when Lizbeth was harsked she could n't leave Liza, 
and when Liza was harsked she couldn't leave 
Lizbeth. " We don't mind," they remarked, "but 
it would be pleasant to 'ave the children come 
'ome." 

"Yes," explained Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, ''we 
call one Bright, the other Spite. It was Spite who 
kept Bright from marrying." 

Then a few miles farther on, the Jacobean gables 
were sent into a corner, and in easy slippers and 
gowns they made merry over re-heated soup, broiled 
steak, salad, and steamed pudding. The Mistress 
Villain named a supreme convenience for these 
scrambled dinners " Saint Trivet," and 7nemmed, 
" Never hire furnished without a blessed trivet." 
Later came a day that she memmed, " Never hire 
furnished without fwo trivets." To distinguish 
the two trivets hitched to the same grate she 
re-named the first one " Saint Makehot," and 
named the younger, " Saint Keephot." 

When excursions were not in order, there were 
long quiet hours in the sunny sitting-room, with 
books new and old, books of Sussex history, tradi- 
tion, archaeology, and fascinating domestic diaries of 
ye olden time that strewed quaint old-world flowers 
all along the paths they trod. There were other 
old books that haunt one's memory like a per- 
fume, books one always means to re-read and that 
one almost never does re-read, as well as old 
books known by name and reputation for a lifetime 
but never yet fitting in to the idle hour, which is 
all they merit. When some time the Master Villain 
requested Mistress Villain to tighten a button or 
set a stitch for him, and she cried despairingly. 



HIRED FURNISHED. 39 

"Leave me, oh, leave me, kill me, oh, kill me, but 
do not ask me to do that !" he grinned and 
answered, " I see; it's one of the late eighteenth 
and early nineteenth female novelists ! Whose 
' throbbing heart,' ' suspended breath/ ^ burning 
brow' are you indulging in now?" 

Behold, it was Miss Farrer's "Inheritance." 
One day each week came the American papers, 
enough of them to fill the entire day. 

" Bah ! " said a Villain, holding out an extra 
paper, a Sunday one, not one of their own subscrip- 
tion. " ' Mrs. Jim has been wearing her white satin 
again ; Mrs. Tom looked very lovely in pink ; Mrs. 
Jack, as usual, wore a white veil and was sur- 
rounded by gentlemen ; Mrs. Disc-Spadden was 
the most stylish woman present ! ' Bah ! think of 
reading such rubbish where the eight hundred 
chaloupes of the Norman sailed." 

" You have read it in Pompeian tombs." , 
'' Never ! I skipped it even in Boston, that dear 
provincial city which so much over-esteems itself 
as one of the cities of the world. Why, Boston 
young men who have never lived elsewhere in 
their lives pose there as ' men of the world.' Im- 
agine it ; Boston, which is only the size of Birming- 
ham ! Would not a Londoner grin to hear a 
Birminghamite name himself a man of the world? 
A man arrived in London from Birmingham, — 
dear me, one is inclined to warn him not to betray 
over-anxiety about his pocket, and not to trust 
any man who knew his great uncle in the 
provinces." 

For days and days there was sunshine, and the 
wild waves sang only of peace to earth and good 
will to winter people in summer villas. 



40 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Which was a very good thing, Pemsy Bay 
being full of winter people in summer tents. A 
somewhat curious feature of English life, the life 
whose heart is the Home, and whose boast that 
only the English know Home in its deepest sense, 
is the homelessness of so many English people. 
In but one other civilized country in the world do 
so many people live without a vine and fig-tree 
they can call their own. Hosts of these English 
people live, or stay, in furnished houses by the 
month, usually not longer than five or six months 
in each. They carry all their possessions in trunks, 
and are " a-tome " wherever they unpack. Every 
autumn they select their winter quarters, either 
from past experiences or from advertisements of 
summer houses ^' to let for the winter at a nominal 
rent." Such a plan of existence is much more 
feasible in mild England than in severer cliaies, 
the west coast particularly, because of the Gulf 
Stream, enjoying a pleasant but somewhat debilitat- 
ing softness such as New England never knows at 
any time of year. Where this curious shadowy, 
flitting, fleeting world homes itself in the summer 
when country and seaside rents are not nominal, 
who knows? The mystery seems never to have 
been solved. In the other half of Pemsy Villa 
was a lively family with a double perambulator. 
That family had spent three winters in the same 
furnished house at a rent (from November to 
June) of ^2 a week. When the Mistress Villain 
asked where they lived between times, " We 
travel," she was told, and not even the twins were 
excepted from the we. The head of the family 
was of gentlemanly appearance, and spoke like 
a person of cultivated intelligence^ but he seemed 



HIRED FURNISHED. 4 1 

to have no occupation, unless he were an author, 
in which case his nervous system must have been 
of most unhterary vigor in a clatter that disturbed 
even the American side of the villa. 

Almost the entire winter population of the Bay 
was of this intangible, impalpable, mysterious 
character, without mutual acquaintance, without 
neighborhood or church society, without any 
common, even any general interests, — the post- 
man served them all alike, and the tradespeople 
from Pemsy ; the sewing-machine men, and Ivy 
Leaf's wooings and cooings over carrots and cab- 
bages ; but more than that there was nothing in 
common save the sunshine and the wild and mild 
sayings of the waves. The former drew one or 
two rather listless gentlemen out upon the shingle 
occasionally ; a governess (apparently) with her 
charges, and bevies of comfortably, not elegantly, 
dressed children, some of them children of lodg- 
ing-house keepers, living here all the year. The 
Americans were sure some of the gentlemen were 
distressed authors unable to work in noisy towns, 
where rents are guineas instead of these few shill- 
ings, and where tradesmen's bills are more punctu- 
ally presented. As they noted the springless steps 
and heavy heads, the Americans wondered if in 
those heads divine imaginations lurked before 
springing forth to dazzle a dull world and make 
yon seedy author immortal. 

"The Vicar of Wakefield and Tony Lumpkin 
were born in a garret decorated with unpaid milk 
scores and accustomed to duns. Otway choked 
on a roll ; a starving author, Sam Boyse, invented 
paper collars and carried manuscript to the printer 
without breeches. Ben Jonson complained of the 



42 HIRED FURNISHED. 

king, ' He sends me so miserable a donation be- 
cause I am poor and live in an alley.' " 

" They are not to be pitied," continued another 
of them. " In such sunshine as this, beside such a 
laughing sea, and with a daily paper from London, 
one might live all one's life in hired-furnished and 
not feel homeless." 

The daily paper deserved its mention. Every 
day by a mid-day train from Eastbourne the morn- 
ing papers were brought by a reckless lad with a 
gold-banded cap inscribed "W. H. Smith," the 
name of a vast newspaper monopoly. Usually this 
lad loitered (when he did not levant into by-roads 
and fields or stop to bet on dogs and horses) on his 
way out from Pevensey Station. At the hour he 
was strictly due the summer hamlet of winter people 
became visibly astir. Heavy gentlemen with walk- 
ing-sticks, spare gentlemen in knickerbockers, 
strolled sparsely up the one flat, wet road toward 
Pevensey. Now and then a shabby velvet jacket 
leaned expectantly from out an opened window ; 
here and there were picket guards of children 
ready to signal that the wayward urchin was in 
sight. 

"Why do they not subscribe to their daily?" 
asked he. " By the postman it would come just 
as soon." 

" But then it must be paid in advance," quoth 
she. 

The wild waves continued their garrulous mur- 
mur for at least two beautiful weeks. Not a day 
of these weeks that the cathedral windows up and 
down stairs were not thrown open for the entrance 
of any of the shining gods that clianced that way. 
The sitting-room encompassed an atmosphere in 



HIRED FURNISHED. 43 

which June roses might grow and blow, to say 
nothing of bananas and pomegranates, and in the 
cahii nights through mists of lace the still moon 
looked upon stirless slumbers. 

Then, ah, then ! Then America sent over the 
Atlantic, Boreas at his very howlingest. " We 
have many more and much worse storms," some- 
body once said to these Americans, "since your 
country took to managing the weather." 

The Villains awoke one morning with cold noses. 
Getting out of bed was like an icy bath ; the villa 
was dark, the air bedlamic. 

" Pumpkin-Hood knew what was coming when 
she advised an oil lamp left near the kitchen 
pump," thought the Mistress Villain. 

They breakfasted in shawl and overcoat, which 
kept them from freezing, but did not keep the table- 
cloth from bulging in spots and waving in places, 
like a ship's sail loosely set. Twice during break- 
fast the cathedral doors blew open, and a thousand 
millions of snowy imps dashed in with biting fury. 
They rushed in, under and about the door, they 
lay in a writhing heap in the front entry, and all 
the while the fire tore up the howling chimney 
like a kitten with a dog at its tail. He looked 
crestfallen, she seemed more so. 

"What are the wild waves saying?" he asked 
with ill-timed levity. 

"This carpet must stop its bounding billows or 
I shall die ! " and her tone was precisely that well 
known to the stewardesses of ocean steamers. " I 
shall die ! Oh, I shall die ! " 

It was a mighty storm ; one with bugles, drums, 
and banners, marching over a shuddering world. 
The Villains discovered why their side of the house 



44 HIRED FURNISHED. 

was the favourite, being the coolest. Mr. Pump- 
kin-Hood assured them '"tain't blew like this in a 
good five year," and congratulated them that the 
piling snow prevented the wind from getting under 
the villa. The lady thought not much was for 
congratulation when she saw her petticoats expand 
into Elizabethan farthingales, or the " cheeses " 
she made at school. The Americans made a great 
pailful of flour paste. They stuffed every crack 
and cranny with rags, and pasted all over with 
thick wrapping-paper. The cathedral window was 
nailed fast, and peace reigned. 

Alas, it was a pallid and shivering peace, for 
the grate held scarcely more than a spoonful of 
fire, being but a summer grate. 

What to do 1 Impossible to generate warmth 
by exercise in a tempest like this kicking at the 
front door. " Lucky I brought two oil stoves," 
she said ; " never will I hire furnished without 
them." 

She placed a stove in two corners of the sitting- 
room, the great heat-giving evening lamp in 
another ; the door and side window were curtained 
with traveUing rugs ; a couple of bricks placed in 
the chimney somewhat stayed the dog and kitten ; 
the grate was piled as high as it could hold with 
red-hot coals. Little thought they to contribute 
to the cyclonic devastation familiar to their villa, 
yet beneath its hitherto unheard-of fervors that 
grate melted almost entirely away. When they 
returned to London, but an abject, tottering skele- 
ton of a grate remained to bear witness against 
them. 

" Look at that thermometer ! " a little later one 
exclaimed. " It looks half frightened to death." 



HIRED FURNISHED. 45 

" I wish I had a lemon soda," she gasped. 

" A vanilla ice would about fit me," he panted. 

There was no question of going out into the 
wailing kitchen, where even the grates would have 
danced in the oven had not amiable pre-Villains 
destroyed or lost them. So at noon, with Saint 
Makehot's help, the tin of Boston baked beans 
came gloriously into play, like a star-spangled 
banner in a Fourth of July breeze. Many hours 
afterwards, when the long absence of daylight, 
the drawn shades, and blazing lamp made the hour 
seem midnight when watches told but half-past 
seven (their usual dinner hour), the potatoes and 
canned corn were prepared by the grate fire, and 
the kitten and dog carried all the scent and steam 
of the crisp chops up the more mildly raging 
chimney ; the saints between them toasted the 
mince pies. 

Thus for three days, and of those seventy-two 
hours they voted without a dissenting voice that 
the cheeriest, the cosiest, the brightest, and pleas- 
antest was the hour of four o'clock tea. They had 
every requisite for supreme enjoyment of the 
hour that so great a tea epicure as De Quincey de- 
manded, even to the wind strong enough against 
which to lean one's back. 

" Cosey," said one of them, " what is it to be 
cosey ? We know and feel that we are cosey, but 
how define it, how put the delight in words ? All 
one can do is to give the causes, the surround- 
ing local color; but can we, or cleverer than 
we, describe the sensations, mental and phys- 
ical, that make us purr like kittens, and purr the 
more cosily the fiercer the storm outside? Leigh 
Hunt knew what it was to be cosey in bed when 



4^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

a wind was moaning outside ; he did not care how 
melancholy a wind to the sound of which he could 
drop asleep in a transport of comfort. To me one 
of the most delightful bits of Robinson Crusoe was 
where he made himself snug (or cosey) for the 
winter. That sense of snugness or cosiness to me 
is the secret of the charm of stories of shipwrecked 
crews in caves or islands. How much softer our 
own beds seem when the blasts dash against our 
windows, how much lighter, more fleecy, our 
blankets when the rain beats upon the roof ! Did 
Spenser not understand this when he wrote of the 
bed of the God of Sleep, — 

*' And more to lulle him in his chamber soft 
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, 
And ever drizzling rain upon the loft 
Mixed with a murmuring winde." 

How did our ancestors manage to hve without 
the word 'cosey,' for it is a comparatively new word, 
you know, and never in use before our century. 
Some say it is Scotch, and some say it came from 
the French caiiseicse ; but whatever its origin, 
Thackeray was guilty of an anachronism in putting 
it into the mouth of a Countess Castlewood when 
the second George was king." 

" Unconscious cerebration," explained the other. 
" All through our exquisite comfort, our luxury of 
warmth, and exhilaration of tea, penetrates an un- 
conscious-consciousness of what we are escaping 
from the roughness outside. We are warmer for 
knowing how cold we might be, we purr because 
we are not sighing. I wonder if it could not be 
proved that in most persons who like stormy and 
rainy weather (as Tennyson, for instance) the 
domestic insdncts are strong?" 



HIRED FURNISHED. 47 

" They must have been strong in De Quincey, 
at least once a day. Hear what he says of tea- 
time : '' Let it be winter in its sternest shape. 
The divine pleasure of a winter fireside, candles at 
four o'clock, warm hearth rugs, a fair tea-maker, 
shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draper- 
ies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging 
audibly without . . . you may compute the period 
when happiness is in season, which in my opinion 
enters the room with the tea-tray " ( " Hear ! 
Hear ! " shouted both Villains). " For tea, though 
ridiculed by those who are naturally coarse in their 
nervous sensibilities, or are become so from wine- 
drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from 
so refined a stimulant, will always be the beverage 
of the intellectual. But there, to save myself the 
trouble of too much verbal description, I will 
introduce a painter and give him directions for 
the rest of the picture. Paint me then a room 
seventeen feet by twelve, put as many books as 
you can into this room, make it populous with 
books, and furthermore paint me a good fire and 
furniture, plain and modest, befitting the cottage of 
a scholar." (" Hear ! Hear ! ") " And near the fire 
paint me a tea-table, and as it is clear no creature 
can come to see one on such a stormy night, 
place only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray." 

" Sydney Smith thanked God that he was not 
born before the habit of tea," said Mistress Villain 
with an air of benediction for all the Smiths. 
" Will you have another dish ? " 



48 HIRED FURNISHED. 



THE DOVE-COTE. 

When the Spring God peeped into the win- 
dows of the Square, came the usual uneasiness, 
the uneasiness of migratory birds whose wings 
tremble for flight, the birds ask not whither. With 
the primroses came the first quivers, by the time 
Oxford Street was yellow with daflies those wings 
were spread. 

But to what purpose? What wit or wisdom in 
spreading ones wings in Cavendish Square? 

" Let us again hire furnished," said he, " and 
find something in the Channel Islands." 

" Tirili / Tirill ! Tirili!^'* remarked his mate, 
putting down her Reisebilde7\ 

When Bright Eyes answered their letter from 
Jersey she was sure nothing could be found within 
their terms. This was discouraging, for Bright 
Eyes is Jersiaise born and bred for ages, and 
ought to know. 

" Ought and do are not synonymous. Bright 
Eyes is born and bred under ceilings twenty feet 
high," said one of them. 

Then they wrote to Le Gallais, the well-known 
house agent, plainly defining that they did not 
require to drive a coach and four up to^ their 
dinner plates. 

His reply assured them of thanks for their 
esteemed favor, but he knew of no furnished 



THE DOVE-COTE. 49 

cottage on the island at their terms, for spring was 
Jersey's season, when everything was let from en- 
gagements made months before ; and he remained 
theirs. 

" Give it up," said he. 

"Won't," said she, being a very won't-give- 
upable person at all times. 

They sent an advertisement to the *^ Jersey 
Times," and offered exactly half they were willing 
(if obliged) to pay. Out of the six answers they 
received (four of them from lodging-house keepers) 
they fell by mutual consent upon Dove Cottage. 

" The description is so quaint," said one. 

" The name is so appropriate," said the other. 

"Ten and six a week is so very charming," said 
one. And the other. 

" Besides, there 's no choice," said both. 

Dove Cottage was in St. Helier's, the capital. 
This was an advantage in more ways than one, 
although in one it was highly disadvantageous. 
The villa offered them at St. Aubin's (everything 
is so saintly on Jersey that Mrs. St. Smith wrote 
them from St. Martin's Villa, St. Saviour's Road, 
St. Helier's) at a pound a week would have given 
them one great advantage, but it would have been 
less convenient in just the respects in which Dove 
Cottage excelled. It seemed preposterous in a 
way to make a %)illeggiatura on an island and never 
get a glimpse of the sea without going in search 
of it. The villa was directly facing the sea, but in 
Dove Cottage the owner wrote with what they 
fancied a spirit of boasting, "You would n't know 
the sea was within fifty miles." This disadvan- 
tage was compensated by superior advantages of 
getting about. The headquarters of all the excur- 

4 



50 HIRED FURNISHED. 

sion coaches and of the raihvays are naturally in 
the capital. It would be pleasant to go home at 
night to cradle songs of the crooning sea, but that 
home-getting would not be possible after an early 
evening hour, except on foot, when excursion cars 
and railway carriages had gone decently to their 
night's repose in St. Helier's. 

There were other doubts. 

" It is a very queer cottage," wrote Bright Eyes. 
" We are afraid it will not please you ; but then, I 
know you like queer things." 

" What does that mean?" asked I'Americain. 

" Means that there are no statues in the en- 
trance hall/' explained I'Americaine. 

" No, it means that your taste is hodd," said he. 

He quoted from a London landlady disgusted 
at seeing her drawing-room " shoot " covered with 
their fantastic draperies, and her mantel ornaments 
bundled out of the apartment. " Bright Eyes 
knows that you are rather hodd, so is not so sure 
you will object to a queer style of cottage." 

" If I am hodd and the cottage is queer? " 
thought the lady, somewhat dubiously. " Perhaps 
this is my doom as a ' Discontented Woman,' 
doomed to be hodd because 1 always hated cook- 
ing and the care of carpets and curtains. I 'd 
rather live in a clean wigwam on parched corn 
than give my days to the elaborate feeding of a 
family under ceilings twenty feet high. I am 
daughter of many women with a 'faculty/ yet 
have I no faculty at all except for happiness where 
so many women would be abjectly miserable. 
There was my early girlhood friend Kitty, with a 
tremendous * faculty,' and whom I had not seen 
for many years ; what did she do, almost the mo- 



THE DOVE-COTE. rj 

ment of our meeting, but show me her cut glass 
and diamonds ; to fue, who care not two straws 
for all the cut glass and diamonds in the world ! 
Had Kitty understood this, would she have told 
me with so much good housekeeperly pride, ' I 
earned them myself, keeping boarders ' ? It takes 
a ' faculty ' to do that ! I could not but remem- 
ber what poor facultyless I was doing while Kitty 
filled her handsome house with folding beds and 
strange faces. My rooms in a Florentine palace 
were close under the Italian sky, fanned by ilexes, 
and perfumed from the flower market below, 
littered with books and unfinished sketches, and 
holding few other good gowns besides the one I 
wore. Those days were quite as hard-worked and 
busy as Kitty's ; they never brought me the least 
bit of cut glass or the tiniest diamond. What they 
did give me was happiness, more than which no 
' faculty ' could ever have brought me. They gave 
me hourly communion with the mighty ages and 
the mighty dead, the glory and illumination of 
their thoughts, their imagination, their art. They 
gave me a wider outlook upon humanity ; a more 
vivid interest in the concerns of its spirit, its 
aspirations, endeavors, achievements, failures, tri- 
umphs ; a clearer knowledge of its knowledges. 
Those days in which, had I a '■ faculty,' I might 
have been studying the human palate and the 
management of dirt, I was living on much less 
money than other women require, on a hundredth 
part of that necessary to make Kitty smile. Up 
there in an ulthno piano, with my head almost strik- 
ing the sublime stars, Giotto's campanile was my 
neighbor, the refuge of Boccaccio and the fair story- 
tellers my perspective, Vallombrosa's leafy heights 



52 HIRED FURNISHED. 

my horizon. Many toil-earned hours of liberty were 
spent in dreamy wanderings through the Medicean 
city ; hours in old churches and convent gardens, 
hours in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries, where, 
never, never, never should I have wandered with 
so clear a head and eye had I been doomed to a 
' faculty.' I am born of a long line of New Eng- 
land housewives ever since my fore-mother Eliza- 
beth at thirty-two left her English home, but not 
her English household ways, and went over with 
her English children to our Plantation of Massa- 
chusetts Bay ; yet as a New England housewife 
I am a failure, a ' Discontented Woman,' when it 
comes to statues in the entrance-hall. Why was 
I born thus to loathe the luxury of fine and 
famous housekeeping? Why can I never look 
but despitefully upon rare viands, upon carpets 
that cost hugely, and silver shining vainglori- 
ously, not one of which add to comfort, but only 
to pride? Why would I rather bang rusty tin 
cups in leaky tents than tinkle cut glass and silver? 
Why do I gloat over hardtack in the byways of 
travel and flout the spongecake of five-o'clocks? 
Why do I prefer the open sky to frescoed walls? 
Why could I never cook even fairly, toil and moil 
as I may in a fine kitchen, yet so triumphantly 
excel other women over a camp-fire or the rickety 
range and oil-stoves of a hired-furnished? Whv 

O J 

could I never pound a nail, except my own? Why 
am I shod with iron indoors ; why am I shod 
with air when once outside? Why am I so often 
a ' Discontented Woman ' ? 

"Am I a 'Discontented Woman'?" 

"■ A regular Mark Tapley," said he. 

She was just beginning to purr when he added : 



THE DOVE-COTE. 53 

'^ Providing you have neither shopping nor fine 
housekeeping to look after. You see, Madam, you 
are not of the New England housewifely stuff at 
all. You've had Indian fighters in your line, 
bold hearts that tracked lurking foes in mysterious 
ambush through dense forests and beyond unknown 
rivers, and knew by the stars the way through 
deadly morasses. You have had many a brave 
adventurer sailing strange seas to bring home to 
Old England and to New the fruits and spices of 
other climes, and strange stories to thrill even 
veins that seldom grew hotter than over preserving 
kettles. You understand, Madam, do you not, 
what writers on the duties of women who hate 
highly-civilized housekeeping never do under- 
stand, that you have fore-fathers in your blood as 
well as fore-mothers?" 

" Many more of them," she proclaimed. '^ I 
remember this much of my ancestral fighting 
days that I never see Pot and Pan Philistina, 
full of pious reproach for other women that I 
do not yearn for her scalp. And I never hear 
nice old gentlemen, whose ancestors must have 
been all fore-mothers, laying down the law of 
'true womanliness,' that I do not long to tell them 
that they should have begun earlier, and taught our 
fathers not to sail and fight, but to knit and spin." 

''Going to the Channel Islands?" remarked 
their English friends. " Beastly passage ! " 

" No word for it," she moaned, the gray and 
windy morning that they rolled between Guernsey 
and Jersey in company with a score or so of other 
dull-eyed, huddled mutes. " No wonder so many 
English people declare they would rather be tossed 
twelve hours in a blanket." 



54 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" These appear to have breakfasted on olives 
and bananas," said he. 

There never was an EngHshman who did not 
loathe ohves, however much he may pretend other- 
wise. When an EngHshman can eat a banana 
without nausea he plumes himself upon being an 
absolute cosmopolite, completely purged of every 
John Bullish prejudice. 

The lady shuddered. 

"Never mind," consolingly; "we are nearly 
there. Just think of Sir Walter Raleigh two days 
and two nights getting to his lieutenant-governor- 
ship of Jersey in 1600." 

The English Channel has a bad reputation at 
best. Between England and the Islands it is 
much worse than between England and France, 
but when it comes to the currents and eddies, 
the swirling channels and sunken reefs between 
Guernsey and Jersey, the English language is an 
insufficient vehicle for the wrath, hatred, and 
loathing (particularly the latter) inspired by it. 
The steamer leaving Weymouth at two a. m., upon 
the arrival of the London express, stopped two 
hours at Guernsey from about six in the morning. 
In the chill dawn Guernsey seemed very high, 
very cold, very remote, — a lonely scramble of 
vague roofs and spires upon a cloudy hill, whither 
was no temptation to climb, and which was less in- 
teresting than the motionless cabin of the Lynx. 

Jersey came in sight, a dull mass of greenish 
gray, now rising, now sinking, between long yeasty 
billows, not long after the Lynx bounded away 
from Guernsey. Came in sight, that was all. It 
stuck stubbornly against the horizon, and refused 
to budge, strain and pant as the Lynx might. 



THE DOVE-COTE. 55 

Sometimes when it disappeared, at least one of 
the oHve-tinted mutes fancied it had gone to 
the bottom of the sea. Oh, joy ! Oh, bHss, to 
follow it there ! 

Notwithstanding the island's shocking behav- 
ior, it was only ten o'clock when their carriage 
drove up to the steep hill of St. Helier's from the 
steamer landing. Nothing reminded them that 
they were not in some provincial English town. 
The streets are narrow, the shop displays modest ; 
always so, it is said, because the island's climate 
rusts everything meant to shine. Only conspic- 
uous announcements of the largest stock of some- 
thing or other " in the Channel Islands " would 
have reminded them, had they forgotten it, that 
they had reached a part of the world which once 
seemed as remote and improbable to them as the 
interior of Tartary or mountains where Mahatmas 
hide. 

" Remark," said she, " St. Helier's street dust 
is laid with salt water." 

" Remark," said he, " every other shop window 
announces an infallible preventive or cure for sea- 
sickness. The fact is apparent that Jersey is sur- 
rounded by — " 

" Bitter regrets," she whimpered. 

" Remember," said he, " New Jersey, ' an island 
in Virginia,' was given to Charles Second's brother, 
the Duke of York. Remember, in May, 1650, 
many passengers, much merchandise, and goods 
of all sorts, set sail from just about where we now 
stand, bound for ' New Jersey in Virginia,' only to 
be captured by Parliamentarians just outside." 

Their carriage drove up to Dove Cottage ; 
almost drove over it. 



56 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" Perfidious woman, you meant to scalp me ! " 
one of them exclaimed. 

"Perhaps it is larger inside than it is out," she 
humbly answered. 

The cottage, blunt upon the street, was snowy 
white with a very green door. It was of white- 
washed stone and seemed cold. It was in a nar- 
row street, or alley, running between the high walls 
of gardens on one side and even lowlier cots on 
the Dove Cottage side. It was as ugly a street 
as could possibly be, without grime or squalor. 
A tidy middle-aged woman, who early informed 
them that she was "Devonshire not Jersey," met 
them at the door, and introduced herself as '' Mar- 
tin," Martin who cared for them so long as they 
remained Doves as were they babes of her own 
gotten from the Lord with many prayers. Kind 
Martin, silent, respectful, honest, pleasant, faithful, 
dear Martin ! To be welcomed upon an unknown 
threshold by one like you v/as worth all that 
ground and lofty tumbling from England, worth 
even the nauseous struggle from Guernsey, worth 
more than words can tell ; for to two Americans 
it idealizes forever the whole race of reduced 
English widows who serve in dove-cotes for four 
shillings a week. 

" I told you so," said the lady with curhng lip. 
For behold, even as she had said, the cot was 
larger inside than out. On the street side it was 
a mean little cot, with narrow, dungeon-like door 
between two windows, the roof remarkably near 
the doorstep, A tall man would almost hesitate 
to enter, without holding to his forelock with both 
hands. Whoever did enter, found that the front 
entry was midway of the stairs, one half the 



THE DOVE-COTE. 57 

Stairs rising to a tiny sitting-room and bedroom, 
the other descending to another bedroom and a 
kitchen-dining-room. Thus on the front side the 
dove-cote seemed half a story high, on the back 
it was two good stories. As if to impress upon 
these Americans the folly of too speedy judg- 
ments the two-story side was in a garden fragrant 
with Jersey bloom, musical with the hum of 
honey-seeking bees. The dining-room windows 
looked out upon this garden " all a-growing and 
a-blowing," as did also every room in the cottage. 
When the back door was open a full tide of 
golden fragrance filled the cot. 

The narrow stairs were covered with oilcloth or 
linoleum, as was the kitchen-dining-room. The 
two bedrooms and sitting-room were carpeted 
with half-worn but perfectly neat ingrain ; the lace 
curtains were undoubtedly the relics of ampler 
draperies descended from more magnificent win- 
dows. The woollen table-covers were neat ; indeed, 
everything in and about was spotless, except the 
sitting-room mantelpiece, hung with a lambrequin 
of cretonne and spottily decorated with bouquets 
of hideous artificial flowers under glass. 

" These are what made the cottage ' queer ' to 
Bright Eyes ! " exclaimed the Mistress Dove as 
she denuded the shelf 

"Our picture gallery," said one of them, "isn't 
it also rather queer? " 

" Baronial hall," said the other. 

They were standing in the front entry between 
the two sections of the stairs. The entry and 
stair space was lined with dark polished wood : 
here and there upon the sheeny surface hung the 
cheapest of colored prints of the early Victorian 



58 HIRED FURNISHED. 

time. Coquettish Isabelle arched her neck and 
puckered her mouth' at much neck-clothed George 
the Fourth ; the Princess Victoria showed her teeth 
under a too short upper lip at a fur-trimmed Napo- 
leon crossing something or other, as one might 
choose to imagine. The whole noble company 
was bought, perhaps, for half-a-crown and was dear 
at that. 

In every respect, apart from its artistic aspect 
and except no water or waste pipes, the cottage 
was entirely satisfactory. As for water, what 
matter so long as Martin brought and carried, 
they never knew whence or whither? 

" Another time we must advertise for a ' queer ' 
Cottage," they agreed. 

In the dining-room-kitchen (with the dining- 
room aspect marked, the kitchen invisible except 
at cooking times) a white robed table was set, as if 
for the breakfast of a pair of dolls — dolls with very 
human appetites, however, or rather /;/human — 
after a Channel passage. Never was bread whiter, 
butter yellower, milk richer, tea more delicate yet 
of healthy body, never was a breakfast- table set in 
a more radiant sphere of summer-time bloom in 
March, if only one did not turn backward to note 
the tiny range (given occasionally to smoking, it 
must be confessed), hidden by curtains, when it 
was cold. That range was cold much of the 
time they were Doves, for Mrs. Dove had not 
failed to bring her oil stoves and oven which re- 
heated the delicious evening rolls for the morning, 
boiled the eggs and made the coffee or tea. As 
for the ubiquitous breakfast fruits from California, 
they needed no cooking. 

" I thought you might like to taste the Jersey 



THE DOVE-COTE. 59 

wonders," said Martin, bringing in a plateful of 
golden brown objects. The instant those Ameri- 
can teeth touched the discs of golden brown 
thence came a gush of melody as were the discs 
coiled pipes of merry Pan. 

" Dough — " she piped. 

" Nuts," piped he. 

" We call them ' wonders ' " said Martin, smil- 
ing but halfly. " I don't mind in the least what 
you call them, for I am sure you like them." 

Honest Martin ! '' Dough " seemed to her a 
slight aspersion upon the exquisite doneness of 
her " wonders." 

" We have never seen them before in Europe," 
they told her. " They are not made in England 
or on the Continent ; perhaps America owes them 
to Channel Islanders who went early to the colo- 
nies, although, to be sure, the Dutch vrouws of 
New York made famous ones." 

For that day only Martin did the marketing, 
her contract including only the forenoon's work. 
Afterwards the Doves did their own provisioning, 
and always in the old Market, where Jersey farm 
women sit and ply their knitting-needles, jabber- 
ing in their antique gibberish ; never in the new 
market under the great glass dome where the 
market-women wear bonnets, speak English among 
themselves, sometimes read penny dreadfuls, sell 
not from gardens of their own, and where a bust- 
ling flower-woman in the very centre cheated 
them nearly the first time they tried. She was 
evidently an Englishwoman ; had she been pure 
Jersiaise, the name on her stall would have been 
Boulanger. 

Mrs. Dove wished she had done the marketing 



60 HIKED FURNISHED. 

that very first day when she saw the extravagant 
excess of salad brought in by Martin. 

" Enough for three dinners," she expostulated ; 
" we like it fresh." 

" A penn'orth/' explained Martin. " I did not 
think to get less." 

Poor Martin seemed rather disturbed when bid 
to examine the shops for various of the tinned 
fruits and vegetables with which these Americans 
were wont to tide over the nongrowing season. 

*' I think the grocers have them/' she said 
mildly; ''but nobody uses them here except very 
seldom ; they are so dangerous." 

" How, dangerous ? " 

" Poisonous. Three people were poisoned by 
them last week, and several the week before. Our 
doctor was once poisoned himself, the only time 
he ever tasted any." 

'' Is he the doctor who attended all these other 
poisoning cases?" 

"Yes, 'm." 

Mrs. Dove laughed. 

" I 've heard of this same doctor in France, 
Italy, and England," she said. "When he cannot 
give a better cause for a violent bihous attack he 
always asks if you 've eaten anything tinned within 
six months. A doctor who fancies himself poisoned 
is always sure to be keen about poison forever 
afterwards. We have eaten hundreds of tins in 
our lives and never were ill a moment from it." 

Martin did not look in the least convinced. 
Neither did she seem an atom more so the day 
they left Dove Cottage and she surveyed a cairn 
of tins under the garden wall. 

" I suppose they ain't really like hus," they heard 



THE DOVE-COTE. 6 1 

their landlady say to Martin over the pile. " They 
ain't like hus or they would be dead copses this 
very minute." 

Then Mrs. Dove remembered the aged sea- 
woman, once heard rebuking a younger one. 

" In my seafaring days," she said, '' we lived upon 
potatoes and salt beef on long voyages until the 
potatoes grew bad, then on salt junk and bread. ' 
You, nowadays, have all the fruits of the earth, and 
the abundance thereof every day in cans, with only 
one of which we should have made a never-to-be- 
forgotten festival. You ought to thank God for 
your ' tinned stuff ! ' " 

Would any matron-since-many-a-year become a 
bride again and begin honeymoon housekeeping 
upon a new and fairy scale? Would she feel 
young pulses throb and thrill with the triumphs of 
acquisition, — one thing at a time and countless 
throbs, two or three things at a time and thrills 
almost infinite? Would she know the young 
wife's joyousness of prowling among bargains, 
even penny and tuppenny ones, turning over 
slightly imperfect or imperceptibly damaged arti- 
cles, picturing how much this would add to the 
sesthetic grace of the breakfast -table, how that 
would make the tea-tray shine, thus building up a 
dainty nest, bit by bit ? Would she know again 
bridely glee over the unwrapping of parcels 
at home with triumphant assertion, " There / all 
that for eighteenpence ? " Would she be a house- 
furnishing bride again with a perfectly clear con- 
science, that thus she is spending less than her city 
tram-fares and is laying up for Martin in the end? 
Then let her, after months of London lodgings, 
dumb mantel clocks and muslin flowers under 



62 HIRED FURNISHED. 

glass, of monotonous white and gold china and 
carpets and couches free to any body's guineas, — 
let her then hire furnished some lilliputian cot in 
a sunny garden, a dove-cote with a few, very few, 
slight deficiencies of table furnishing, perchance a 
mild scantness of fruit saucers, a cream jug too 
large or too ugly, no distinctive butter-dish per- 
haps. Then if her wedding ring does not brighten 
up and fancy itself young again, young, foolish, and 
preposterously happy, alas, she might as well have 
remained a maid and lectured upon anti-vivisection 
and the rights of cats. Never, in their home across 
the sea, had these Doves cooed over anything as 
they did now whenever Mrs. Dove came back from 
town. One day a glass cream-jug for sixpence 
filled their souls with young rapture. Another day 
six deep saucers at a penny each increased their 
sum of dual joy and portions of peaches and 
cream ; a fancy glass for threepence, the nick 
thrown in, set them up in a spoon-vase and happi- 
ness ; fivepence well spent gave them as good as 
a crystal sugar basin ; a wild, wild shilling thrilled 
them with ecstasy and a dashing preserve stand. 
Their daily table to them was really pretty, for the 
Jersey air makes linen whiter than driven snow, 
and with not more than three dollars spent in 
honeymoon purchases their contentment was in- 
creased by many a dollar's gain. The bride one day 
even regretted that their present hired-furnished 
included such faukless bed linen. " I saw such 
beautiful sheets and pillow-cases," she told, " I 
ached to buy them. What a pity we paid that 
extra sixpence over our ten shillings a week for 
linen." 

The bride did forget herself so far as to accept 



THE DOVE-COTE. 63 

with blushes a pot or two of blooming plants, and 
to set them upon the wide window-sill among 
books from the extensive Beresford circulating 
library, with as youthful grace — Ah, well ! why 
not carry May into October when one can? 

One day, as she displayed her purchases, " I 
ordered four histories of Jersey at the library, and 
three novels in which the scene is Jersey ; they 
will arrive when the boy makes his afternoon 
round," she remarked. ''The man at the delivery 
desk asked me if I had ever seen any of the 
American magazines ! " 

'• Heavens ! If you spoke in your present voice 
he need never have asked." 

*' It 's my best American accent," she continued 
nasally. *' When the man spoke of the magazines 
by name I told him I knew them all, as I am an 
American. He exclaimed, ^ Impossible ! you have 
no accent.' ' Yes, I have,' I answered. ' You 
do not use it then,' said the man, still unconvinced. 
So you see now, I am using it ! He said the 
American magazines were popular here only for 
the pictures ; readers do not care much for the 
letter-press, he thought. English patrons of the 
library did not think much of anything American, 
they were mostly military families, and had n't yet 
forgiven the American revolution." 

" What a long tail that revolution has ! How 
generous of these half-pay military families to be 
amused by our picture books ! Yet we never find 
the ' Atlantic Monthly ' in when we ask for it. I 
suppose these inheritors of revolutionary dishkes 
are looking at its pictures ! '^ 

"•I guess so," she answered, in a voice that made 
him clap both hands to his ears. " You see they 



64 HIRED FURNISHED. 

do not recognize Americans, except those who 
do all their talking as tea-kettles sing. Only 
yesterday Bright Eyes remarked, * How strange 
that one never hears of Americans that are not 
nasty and never knows one that is not nice ! ' " 

Jersey is the largest of the Channel Islands 
and the sunniest, having its chief exposure from 
north to south instead of vice ve7'sa as Guernsey 
has, only eighteen miles away from point to point, 
although thirty by steamer. Guernsey, nearer the 
broad Atlantic, is more subject to fogs. When- 
ever the postman was late and no letters by eleven 
o'clock, the Doves were sure the Lynx, the Ante- 
lope, or the Gazelle, was caught in a Guernsey fog, 
however brightly the sun was shining upon Jersey. 
At such times they almost broke their necks cran- 
ing for sight of the signal pole that tells St. Helier's 
just where in the Channel its letters are. Jersey, 
in fact, is universally known as "the sunniest spot 
in the British Isles." The climate is balmy, at 
times relaxing, while Guernsey and Sark brace 
like quinine or champagne. Thus Jersey is more 
favorable for delicate lungs than for lazy livers. 
In its scenery it is as good as a continent for 
variety. Within its coast line is every character 
of miniature picturesqueness from the pastoral 
to the heroic. On the north it rises precipi- 
tously with echoing caverns, cliffs and sea-sucking 
gorges. There the billows surge and beat against 
impregnable rocks with every fury of infinite 
nature, while but a small turn of the coast calms 
those furies to sunny and rippling laughter. There 
cannot be more dulcet shores and inland vistas 
than at Anne Port for instance, where the Jersey 
Lion sleeplessly watches France. The island is 



THE DOVE-COTE. 65 

twelves miles at its longest, eight at its broadest. 
With these little dimensions are its wonderful miles 
of green lanes. Lanes? Nobody knows what 
lanes may be till he has wandered and lost him- 
self for hours, he fancies forever, in those emerald 
labyrinths, winding, turning, circling, bow-knotting 
themselves into the very bhndest of mazes. It is 
said that there are five hundred miles of these 
Gothic lanes into which the sunshine never pen- 
etrates and where the leaves lie from many and 
many a dead summer ; but the estimate should be 
altered to say there were five hundred miles. The 
exceeding dampness of these romantic lanes has 
been found a cause of disease, hence many of 
them have been thrown open to the day by cutting 
down trees. The prosperous potato culture (early 
potatoes for Covent Garden) of the island has also 
caused much havoc among trees, a havoc bit- 
terly resented by Jersiaises of twenty-foot ceilings 
who had their early potatoes just the same when 
the island was yet tangled with lanes. Jersey 
bids fair to turn into a great potato patch in 
London's service, a cruel promise indeed to these 
gorse-golden commons, these flowery meads and 
meadows, these waving orchards and spangled 
thickets of wayside rose and berry, these rugged 
hills and dreamy vales set in a girdle of gray sand 
dunes, and grayer precipices. 

Always the Doves were amazed, then angered, 
to see how this market greed has vanquished every 
consideration of beauty and fitness. Imagine 
garden plots by the hundreds in front of cottages 
of considerable pretensions and thrifty farmhouse 
doors, laid out in the designs favorite in small 
front yards ; crescents, hearts, ovals, diamonds, 



66 HIRED FURNISHED. 

all encircled with wide borders, and all of potato 
plants. Where lilies should grow are potatoes, 
where roses might perfume the air, potatoes add 
a few pennies to the pocket. 

" Those people all eat inferior potatoes," said 
indignant Myra. '' Jersey potatoes go to London 
and poorer ones come to us from French farms." 

Sir Walter Raleigh and his potato zeal in Jersey, 
are not gratefully esteemed by our dignified 
Myra. 

" That explains why Bright Eyes the other day 
was so much interested that I was writing upon 
' The Potato,' when I am ashamed to say the sub- 
ject was only Plato," laughed a Dove. 

Potatoes bring money to Jersey, but also danger. 
They bring hordes of French peasants every year 
from the coast only thirteen miles away, for the 
annual work of planting and harvest. They are 
a class of easy morals or none at all, and Jersey 
thus receives an enemy to its own sobriety and 
thrift. In ancient days Jersey feared the French- 
men of battles, now it has reason to fear the 
Frenchmen of peace. In the old days it built 
towers and forts to keep them away, now little 
steamers dart to and fro, and Jersey has only its 
laws for its protection. Its government uses its 
law of banishment freely, so evildoers have only 
to be brought before the court to be banished for 
years, or for hfe, as the case may be. This is 
cheaper than keeping them in jail, but what hap- 
pens if the banished defy the law, and return, 
nobody seems to be able to tell. Another law, 
devised chiefly for protection against the French, 
forbids the sale of land to any foreigner. This 
law so vexed the Doves that they yearned to buy 



THE DOVE-COTE. 6/ 

their cot and live in it forever till they were 
assured that they were not foreigners, only those 
detested French. The menace to Jersey is what 
is called the "seeding" of the island by French 
farm people. Many come over from Normandy 
every year for the potato season, and learn for the 
first time in their lives the ease of life free from 
taxation. They are eager to remain, and for 
that purpose hire themselves by the year upon low 
terms. If they are of a decent sort they make 
themselves extremely useful to their employers, 
live on almost nothing, and save money. The 
French make the very best of servants, workmen, 
and laborers, and are in much higher esteem as 
such than the shiftless and insolent English. In 
time the Jersey farmer and his wife grow old or wish 
to move into town. They cannot sell their farm 
to their faithful French servants, but they can sell 
to any children of those servants born on the island. 
The French couple are given easy terms and buy 
in the names of their children ; thus the " seeding " 
takes place by which the farming part of the island 
has become very largely French. Fortunately that 
" seeding " is as yet counterbalanced by the con- 
tinual increase of English population in the towns, 
Jersey being extremely popular with retired army 
men whose systems have been rendered sensitive 
to the harsh English weather by long service in hot 
climates. The French farmers themselves become 
Jerseymen as much as they can, in their delight 
at freedom from the taxes that bowed them down 
Id-bas. The Channel Islands are free from all taxes 
save their own, that is, they are entirely free from 
English taxes. They pay nothing to the Crown ; 
why should they, when they as a part of Nor- 



68 HIRED FURNISHED. 

mandy conquered England and gave it kings? 
Even to this day, loyal Channel Islanders often 
drink a health to "Victoria, Duchess of Normandy 
and Queen of England." Very curious is the 
fact that these islands are so supremely proud of 
their Norman origin, yet no terni of contempt is 
greater in Jersey than " Norman." Even to call 
a man ''^ espece de Nonnand'''' is scarcely better 
than naming him a dog. Centuries ago, as Mat- 
thew Prior wrote, it was the same to call a man 
^' Englishman." The Channel Islanders, the real 
ones, not English arrivals of only a few genera- 
tions ago, see an infinite distance between the 
eleventh century Normans that they are, and the 
nineteenth that they are not. They are a proud 
people, to whom even the English are parvenus, 
proud of their little archipelagoan nation, its sturdy 
independence, and its ancient laws. The islands 
have Home Rule in its broadest, fullest sense ; 
have each its own parliament, its own judiciary, 
entirely independent of England and also of the 
others. In Jersey a man may marry his deceased 
wife's sister, in Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark he 
cannot, and each island has its own immigration 
laws and laws of banishment. They have no 
representation at Westminster, and want none, for 
such would reduce them from their position as an 
insular nation to that of mere English shires. 
The Crown, as representative of ducal Normandy, 
furnishes a lieutenant-governor to Jersey and one 
to Guernsey, but in all the island legislation, he 
is of inferior rank to the Bailiff, the chief island 
officer, whose dignity dates from ancient Nor- 
mandie. In the States {Etats), the island's legisla- 
ture, are two thrones, the highest of these for 



THE DOVE-COTE. 69 

the Bailiff, the other for the Queen's officer, the 
heutenant-governor. The Baihff must always be 
present, the governor may do as he chooses, and 
is rarely present. 

Very many curious laws and quaint practices 
still exist from ancient Norman days, such as 
Normandy itself forgot ages ago. Seigneurs still 
hold certain rights or fiefs, and every man who 
buys or sells land must look well that seigneurial 
rights are properly hunted up. The seigneur 
may be as poor as Job's turkey, he may be a 
Tasmanian tramp, may be working in a Californian 
mine, or selling calico in a London shop, but his 
" rights " still exist, be they so many bushels of 
wheat or so many ducks and capons, inherited 
from his ancestors. He may have not one single 
inch of land of his own, but pounds and shillings 
belong to him by rights of his forefathers. It is 
amusing to read of the measures of wheat, the 
eggs, fowls, etc., due to the Queen every year, not 
only as Duchess of Normandy, but for other sei- 
gneurial rights that have come to her by lapses in 
direct lines, by forfeitures, etc. These, of course, 
nowadays are all paid in coin of the realm. " On 
the paper," as the islanders say, the Doves read 
that the chief rents of her Majesty for the year 
were ''wheat, los. per quarter; capons, 5s. 6d. 
per couple ; fowls, 3s. gd. per pair ; two score 
eggs, 2S. 6d." When Victor Hugo lived in Haute- 
ville House, in Guernsey, Charles Hugo wrote that 
his father paid the Queen (Duchess of Normandy) 
"two pullets a year." 

Only the other day of A. D. 1897, we heard of 
a quaint survival of feudal tenure in these islands. 
The manor of Sainte H^lene, in Guernsey, was pur- 



JO HIRED FURNISHED. 

chased some years ago by Miss von GersdorfF, a 
German canoness. With the manor were sold 
the droits dii seigneur, and the canoness became 
henceforth chatelaine, or datne du maiioir. Re- 
cently Miss von Gersdorff presented herself before 
the Royal Court, and then and there, before that 
august assembly of island notables, renounced 
all the rights of '' chief rents, field rents, cham- 
page, and poulage," due to her from her tenants. 
While releasing them in perpetuity from these 
dues, she still retained her rights as lady of the 
manor. 

For the benefit of those unversed in Norman 
law, " champage " is the twelfth stack of any kind 
of grain grown on the rented fields, and ^' poul- 
age " are the fowls due each quarter from the ten- 
ant to his liege lords. These dues were probably 
originally devised for the maintenance of the sei- 
gneur's table. That even at the present day these 
dues fall heavily on the tenant may be inferred 
from the gratitude of those released. 

Headed by the seneschal, or bailiff of the 
manor, they presented Miss von Gersdorff with 
what the local paper calls a " testimonial of their 
thankfulness for such generosity." This testimo- 
nial took the solid and practical form of a silver 
tea and coffee service, and silver tea-kettle, on an 
oak and silver tray. On the tray was engraved in 
French, " Presented by the tenants of the manor 
of Sainte Helene to Miss Margaret M. A. R. von 
Gersdorff, canoness, lady of the manor, in recog- 
nition of her having voluntarily surrendered to 
them in perpetuity all rights to the chief rents, 
champage, and poulage." 

When the islands were finally separated from 



THE DOVE-COTE. /I 

Normandy, being all that was left to miserable 
John Lackland of the Crown's continental posses- 
sions, many seigneurs were obliged to choose 
between English John and French Philippe, and 
to surrender either their Norman or their island 
estates. The surrendered island estates reverted 
to the Crown. It is somewhat curious, although 
perfectly comprehensible, that the two most worth- 
less kings of England, John Lackland and Charles 
the Second, are the ones always most respect- 
fully named in the Channel Islands. Indeed 
these seagirt rocks are the only places in the world 
where they are mentioned without contempt. 

The old law of heritage still holds in these 
islands. At the doors of the court-house, or of 
the legislative building, may be seen posted lists of 
dead proprietors whose estate in default of direct 
heirs of his body (brothers and sisters not counted) 
reverts for a year and a day to his seigneur. 
When WiUiam IV. of England died in 1837, 
without direct heirs, a certain fief of the Crown 
owed rights to an island seigneur, who claimed 
them, and received a royal indemnity to release 
his vassal^ the King, whose subject he himself 
was ! 

It was as a vassal of France that John Lack- 
land was summoned to appear before Philippe- 
Auguste. His refusal to appear under charge 
of the murder of his nephew before his seigneur 
suzerain resulted in loss of his Norman fiefs, and 
decided the fate of these islands. 

Another curious survival is the dameur de Haro. 
This dameur de Haro is a right of appeal by which 
any person considering himself wronged may call 
upon the law in the most peremptory and effica- 



72 HIRED FURNISHED. 

cious manner possible. The origin of the custom 
is unknown ; some say it is descended from appeals 
to the justice of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, 
and is an abbreviation of Ha ! Rollo ! Others 
contend that the cry is even more ancient than 
Rolf or Rollo, and that Haro was a Frisian chief. 
Whatever its origin, its power is magical. Let a 
man find, or believe he finds, a neighbour over- 
building upon his land, any trespasser upon his 
estate or rights of any kind, and he has only to 
take with him two witnesses before the offender, 
then to fall upon his knees, and, lifting up his 
hands, cry ^^ Haro f a faide, fnon prijice ! on me 
fait tort P'' (Help me, my prince, I am wronged). 
At these words everything stops instantly. Work- 
men upon a wall, diggers in a field, cutters of 
trees, all drop their tools as if by a command 
from heaven. For his life no man dare make 
another move, except to leave the place. Noth- 
ing more can be done until the court can decide 
between the two, and the aggrieved party has this 
much assurance that not another stroke can be 
struck at his rights. The court nmst attend to 
the matter at once, for it holds the place of that 
invisible prince, dead and dust a thousand years 
but mighty yet by the magic of his name. 

Some years ago before the " Wild Jerseyman " 
and " Flying Islander" ambled so decorously across 
the island a certain judge was bitterly opposed to 
their introduction. He was a man of the olden 
time and as much opposed to innovations as was 
the Jersey farmer who ordered in his will that his 
coffin should not go to its grave by any of the 
newly opened lanes, but be carried through the 
old emerald labyrinths, though thus the distance 



THE DOVE-COTE. Tl 

was twenty times as much and his coffin in island- 
fashion carried on men's shoulders. For some 
Jerseymen, as well as some other men, do not 
in the least care how much it costs to have their 
own way when somebody else foots the bills, or 
carries the coffin. This judge had talked against 
the projected railways, voted against them, done 
all he could save call on the invisible prince. It 
is to be said that mon prince cannot be invoked 
without enormous expense to the invoker if he 
be found to have unjustly invoked. All other 
business must be set aside at once and the whole 
machinery of the island law directed to that ap- 
peal. Hence the clameur is rarely used where 
the case does not seem to demand instant action. 
The angry judge thought this case did, for the 
ground was being turned and labourers had 
begun work to introduce into peaceful Jersey 
the hateful screaming things which Jerseymen 
had comfortably done without since the world 
began. He went out before the workmen, this 
doughty and determined old Jerseyman, and knelt 
in the dirt before them. With hands raised in 
supplication, he cried " Haro ! Haro 1 a I ^aide, 
mon prince I on me fait tort ! " 

In an instant, the twinkling of an eye, the work 
ceased. Horses were stopped in their tracks, 
spades were arrested in the ground, men were re- 
duced to absolute inaction. Nothing more could 
be done till the officers of the court came to de- 
cide if mon prijice had been justly or unjustly in- 
voked. In this case the decision was against the 
judge ; he was forced to pay enormously for his 
mistake, and died soon after, a ruined man. Even 
mon prince, the invisible hero of unknown ages, 



74 HIRED FURNISHED. 

was on the side of progress and railways ; the 
poor old Jerseyman had not given him credit for 
so much modernity. 

Wherever there is a suspicion that the clameur 
may be raised against repairs to a house or garden- 
wall, or against the foundation of a new one, the 
business is usually done in the night. A man 
who is angered to find a foot (or an inch) of his 
lot built upon, may decently go to law as other 
men do, but he cannot appeal to mo7i prince after 
the work is done. Thus it is said that very much 
Jersey building is done in the night. Once upon 
a time, Jean and Jean, father and son, cutting 
down trees on some disputed territory suspected 
the intention of a neighbor to appeal to 77ion 
prince against them. That same day Jean le 
jeime stood beside one of the tree-cutters, a 
stranger to him, and made a remark or two. The 
other Jerseyman, the labourer, paid not the slight- 
est heed, and Jean concluded that he was pretty 
deaf. He shouted, " My father wishes this one 
left," whereupon the other looked up with a grin. 

"You are the son of Maitre Jean? I thought 
you had come for the other part)^, with the clajnenr 
de Haror 

The Doves found all this romantic, fascinating, 
enchanting. Seigneurs, fiefs, tribute, homage, the 
language of heroic days, somehow seemed to turn 
their dove-cote into an eagle's nest upon a hoary 
ocean rock, or the loftiest branch of eternal forests 
swayed by the eternal sea, a coign of vantage 
overlooking all the centuries. They dreamed, 
and awoke not when they recognized the noblest 
seigneurial names upon butchers' carts and fish- 
barrows ; names once to make vassals proud of 



THE DOVE-COTE. 75 

their vassalage, now of forgotten fame, save to in- 
quisitive foreigners like these Doves. 

" After much searching, I found canned corn 
to-day," she meditatively said. '' The dealer^ not 
knowing me for an American, kindly explained to 
me that it was a new vegetable just coming into 
use and much liked by many. I could scarcely 
find tongue to answer him, for I saw that he was a 
de Paisnel, a de Carteret, or something equally 
glorious." 

'' Shall we have some for dinner ? " 

She bowed her head low upon her book. 

^^ Haro ! Ha7'0 ! a Paidc., mon prifice I If here 
isn't a horrid American wanting his green corn 
among these descendants of seigneurs, these 
ghosts of heroic ages called ' dark.' Haro I Haro / 
a Vaide, mon prince f'' 

One interesting ceremony of the island is the 
annual June procession of parish officials through 
highways and byways with long staves. If any 
branch or drooping vine is touched by the staves 
the owner is fined. Naturally a day or two before 
the staves there is much activity in the way of 
tree trimming all over the island. In spite of this 
activity, there is usually a considerable levy of 
fines, a great delight among the staff-bearers being 
to fine each other. As the fines go to providing 
the officials with a banquet, the fining among 
themselves is taken in good part, even when it is 
suspected that something of an arm's-length has 
been added to the regulation staff. The origin of 
this custom is found, as so many Channel Island 
customs are, in ancient Normandy. In the olden 
days, men with long staves preceded the Holy 
Sacrament carried to dying beds, in order that 



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nothing might interfere with its passage through 
the hish lanes. In those days the staff-bearers 
went on foot. Now they ride in a char-a-bancs, 
yet their staves are still of the antique length. 

Over the wall of the dove-cote peeped a wonder- 
ful wallflower. All the island flowers are won- 
derful, so rich and brilliant, beside their English 
sisters like fairy princesses beside beggar maids. 
Especially are the wallflowers radiant and robust, 
climbing like housebreakers, peeping over a 
hundred walls, stealing to the sills of a hundred 
windows, making the day glorious with gold stolen 
from the sun. 

This particular wallflower winked and blinked 
at the staff-bearers, nodding her brilliant head 
as much as to say, in most impudent fashion, 
" Don't you wish you were I, with banquets 
furnished every day from earth and heaven, at 
root and outermost petal? Don't you wish you 
were I with a white table spread always before 
me, the winds bringing me nectar, the dews 
ambrosia, while you silly stafl'-bearers must lunge 
and thrust from a hired wagon to fine enough for 
one big dinner a year ! " 

When the Doves reached home that night, 
their almost absurdly tall and thin landlady waved 
phenomenally long arms at them from her door. 

^' I will have to pay a pe;^^/ity for your wall- 
flower," she shouted. " There 's been a perfic 
e//Vermic of fines to-day. They shall get arf-a- 
crown from me. I went out before they came 
and tried to reach that sarsy wallflower on a chair 
with my humbril. I could n't reach it by a foot. 
'Ow them raskils must ' a stretched ! " 

''They never fine your lilies," comforted Mrs. 



THE DOVE-COTE. 77 

Dove — '^ your Jersey lilies, that tower like columns 
of ivory with central spark of living fire." 

" Bad for them if they did ! '' Madame De 
Longue confessed. 

The Jersey Lily. The name is familiar to us, 
even though its associations are less than fair 
to those who have never seen the real flower 
blooming in island gardens a miracle of stainless 
beauty. 

Nevertheless, the Jersey lily is really the Guern- 
sey lily and transplanted thence. On Guernsey 
it blooms more brilliantly and earlier ; grows to 
more regal height. It is a native of Japan (the 
Afnaryl/is sarniensis) and came by accident to 
Guernsey, in the reign of the virtuous Charles 
Stuart. It was a dreadful thing, of course, when 
that English vessel all the way from Japan had 
struggled so nearly home, only to be wrecked in 
the cruel Channel. That any good could come of 
that tragedy of destruction, no man would have 
dared prophesy. That a blessing of beauty for 
balmy Guernsey was in those cruel waves, who 
would have believed, even had such prophets been 
ten thousand, — that Guernsey taking bits of the 
wreck to her breast would enrich herself, even in 
hard money, the value of the lost ship and its 
cargo countless times over, would have seemed 
but a bit from auld wives' tales. 

When the great ship went to pieces the water 
was strewn with wreckage. Nobody ever thought 
of securing little brown objects very like onions 
that danced hither and yon on the waves ; how 
long those onions floated who knows? Nobody 
knows how many ebbing and flowing tides took 
them nearer and nearer to land or whether one 



7S HIRED FURNISHED. 

breaker or many finally swept them beyond the 
sea's reach in beds of soft warm sand. 

Years afterwards a governor of the island in 
the reign of Charles II. was struck by the beauty 
of certain flowers blooming m the sand near the 
shore. The island people assured him that they 
had always been there, that they were indigenous, 
even though never found save in that one place. 
Being something of a florist he knew the value of 
the prize, and had them transplanted and culti- 
vated, sending some roots to England, where they 
were greatly admired. It became a favorite in 
England and on the Continent, but nowhere 
flourishes so well as under the trees of Guernsey. 
One might fancy the flower held yet in its heart 
golden gratitude for the soft warm sands that 
received and cherished its sea-drenched ancestors. 
Very little care is bestowed upon the Guernsey 
lily ; its soil is never fertilized but slightly covered 
with sea sand. They grow in beds, hundreds of 
them together. It is a very capricious flower. It 
must have been by pure caprice that after so long 
floating on buffeting waves it chose to make itself 
at home in the Guernsey sea sand to wave its 
radiant heads in defiance of its chill for years 
without the slightest effort to become naturalized 
elsewhere on the island. In England it can be 
made to blossom a second time only with the 
greatest care, and even in Jersey it is not at its 
best. 



FORT CHEER. 79 



FORT CHEER. 

Came Bright Eyes to the dove-cote one morn- 
ing, as Bright Eyes often came, yet not often 
enough. 

" To-morrow shall be a good day for the Fort, 
so be ready by ten," she said. 

The Doves fluttered with joy. For they had 
long ago in London heard beautiful stories of that 
Fort in sunny Jersey, where, one afternoon in 
every week during fine weather, Bright Fyes and 
her lovely sisters are " at home " to their friends. 
They had heard of the dainty teas and merry 
luncheons served upon velvet sward within the 
parapets, of those dainty teas even upon the 
sunny parapets themselves, looking across shining 
water to cathedral spires of la belle Finance, the 
spires of Coutances to which diocese Jersey be- 
longed in ancient days. They had heard of tea- 
parties taking refuge without loss of gayety in the 
cosey guard-house when the winds from France 
became too boisterously enamored of the com- 
pany, or the rain kissed fair faces wantonly. On 
that side of the island is a string of Martello 
towers like those between Eastbourne and Has- 
tings in Sussex, together with three small forts, all 
long ago dismantled before the pipes of peace. 
Several of these towers are hired by the year 
from the island government by families and parties 



80 HIRED FURNISHED. 

of friends, who tidy, dry and furnish them for 
picnicking purposes, rendezvous for shrimping par- 
ties, and for afternoon teas, with cards and par- 
lor games. "Fort Cheer" is much the most 
important of these. It has a moat, now dry^ 
across which one walks a shuddering bridge. 
Inside mighty portals, although decayed, are two 
houses of one room each, and a space of satiny turf 
sheltered by high walls. Fort Cheer was erected 
the year of the Stamp Act that so infuriated the 
American colonists. Pitt did not intend to scare 
these far-away growlers (he little dreamed what 
thunderbolts were forging in the West) with the 
four guns and dozen red-coats of Fort Cheer. 
Fie meant only that the frog-eaters yonder should 
feel sleepless eyes upon them. The French call 
them boule-dogiies. 

One goes to Fort Cheer from St. Helier's 
by carriage, or takes to the " Wild Jerseyman." 
Jersey has two narrow-gauge railways, the "Wild 
Jerseyman" and the " Flying Islander," neither of 
which has ever been arrested for fast driving. 
A little journey on the " Wild Jerseyman " gives 
an American a very complete consciousness of 
remoteness from home, a consciousness made 
somewhat fantastic by imagination of a foreign 
remoteness greater than it is. The prim little 
carriages trundle primly between stations where 
almost every word uttered, and they are many, 
is in a language never heard before, however wide 
one's wanderings. Now and then a few words 
seem familiar, but the whole swing and sway of 
utterance, the lights and shades of intonation, are 
new and strange to the Americans. It is curi- 
ous that this patois is interchangeable with the 



FORT CHEER. 8 1 

most perfect French, and the patois-speakers have 
no difficulty in understanding a Frenchman, how- 
ever often he may be checked by words from 
them. The names of the stations too are dis- 
tinctly French, Havre des Pas, Greve d'Azette, 
Samares {siir-les-Marais) , Le Hocq, La Rocque, 
Grouville, Gorey (or Gouray). At various of 
these stations stout countrywomen get in and get 
out, with full or empty baskets from St. Helier's 
market, and begin the tale of their adventures in 
the vast metropolis before they are fairly squeezed 
out upon the platform. In one carriage a party 
of deputies to the States (or Etats) as the island 
parliament is named, discusses some projet de lot 
in the same incomprehensible tongue. Bright 
Eyes, born to this variously-corrupted mediseval- 
ism, translates to the Doves, but, asked to write a 
word or two of it down, becomes, hke our troops 
at Bull Run, " shockingly demoralized." Modern 
Parisian French is much more easily written by 
Miss Bright Eyes. 

Within Fort Cheer only one of the old guard- 
houses is in what somebody styles " polite condi- 
tion." The tumbling one shelters wood and coal ; 
the other, spick and span, is newly lined with 
lustrous wood, floor, walls, ceiling. A roomy 
closet holds the table service and tea-kettle, per- 
manent dwellers in Fort Cheer. A long table and 
many chairs are ready for hospitable service in- 
doors or out as the heavens declare ; the grate is 
of grandmotherly proportions compared with the 
puny imp of which the Americans made an auto 
da fern Pevensey Villa. 

But what to say of the view from the ramparts ! 
A poet's, not a common scribbler's, pen should 

6 



82 HIRED FURNISHED. 

describe that stretch of blue and golden water, 
with horizon visibly haunted by the poetic mystery 
that is la belle Fra?tce, France so well known to 
everybody, but ever an enchanting ideal seen from 
this filmy distance, — the billowy inland roll of 
rich verdure, the wooded heights, the gorse-gilded 
common, the wayward roofs and spires of Grou- 
ville and Gorey, all completed by as picturesque 
a ruined castle as ever haunted romantic dreams. 

Gorey Castle, " Mont Orgueil," has a very defi- 
nite and positive history of attacks, defences, and 
surrenders, of political prisoners and heroic deeds, 
as well as dark ones, but, for all that, its architecture 
seen from the Fort is of fairyland only, or the 
dream world. From Fort Cheer it is also at times 
stern and massive yet, hurling contempt upon the 
modern world and its cowardly warfare mowing 
down hosts by machinery and not man to man 
with spear, dart, and javelin, or even awkward 
blunderbuss and God with the bravest arm. At 
other times it is a dusky giant wounded and 
crouching beneath a cloak of thick ivy upon its 
rock. Then, in a fleeting instant, it becomes an 
aerial vision, vaporous, floating, bodiless, the 
poetic memory and no more of brave deeds and 
heroic thoughts, of dashing chivalric ages that 
died so long before the nineteenth century was 
born. 

"It was built in the reign of Henry 11. on the 
site of one of Caesar's castles," said Mentor Karl ; 
"there are dolmens behind it, as you shall see, and 
bits of Roman masonry in their keep." Jersey was 
for the King during the parliamentary wars, while 
Guernsey declared for the parliament. Charles 
II., then Prince of Wales, was twice secretly on 



FORT CHEER. 83 

the island during his exile from England. Jersey 
was very proud to have acknowledged his sov- 
ereignty when he had none elsewhere \ so, for a 
time he was king of Jersey and of nothing else. It 
is said he was proclaimed King by a Carteret or 
two and in presence of a score or so of people, 
and that he never ceased to laugh all his life long 
at the pompous insignificance of that first pro- 
clamation of his sovereignty. He was nineteen, 
but already with vicious habits and friends. He 
did not come to the island in any heroic guise or 
manner, you may be sure. He wore deep purple, 
the royal color of mourning, for his father, while 
the Duke of York, then fifteen, wore the deepest 
black. Their retinue of 300 was mostly cooks, 
valets, hair-dressers, although there was one fero- 
cious looking creature with a moustache who was 
the chief tailor's wife. They nearly ate Jersey out 
of house and home. Charles lived at Elizabeth 
Castle, near St. Helier's, but often rode out to 
Gorey Castle. During the Civil War, Puritan 
Prynne was imprisoned here and amused himself 
by writing bad poetry. 

" Mont Orgueil castle is a lofty pile 

Within the eastern port of Jersey-isle, 

Seated upon a rocke full large and high, 

Close by the shore next to Normandie, 

Near to a sandy bay where boats do hide 

Within a peere safe from wind and tide. 

Three parts thereof the flowing seas surround, 

The fourth north westwards is firm rocky ground. 

A proud high mount, it hath a rampier long, 

Foure gates, foure posternes, bulwarks, sconces strong, 

All built with stone on which there mounted lie 

Fifteen cast pieces of artillery, 

Witli sundry murdering chambers planted so 

As best may fence itself and hurt a foe. 

A guard of soldiers (strong enough till warre 



84 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Begins to thunder) in it lodged are, 

To watch and ward it duly night and day, 

For which the king allows them monthly pay. 

The Governor, if present, here doth lye ; 

If absent, his lieutenant deputy. 

A man of war doth keep and lock 

The gates each night of this high tow 'ring rocke. 

The castle's ample healthy and 

The prospect, pleasant both by sea and land, 

Two boist'rous foes sometimes assault with losse 

The fortresse which their progresse seems to crosse, 

The raging waves below which ever dash 

Themselves in pieces whiles with it they clash." 

To tell the truth the Channel Islands have 
never distinguished themselves by additions to 
the world's literature, even although they were 
early in the field. Wace, who wrote the " Roman 
deRou" before Dante dreamed the "Inferno," 
was a Jerseyman, and said so in twelfth-century 
French. 

" Je di et dirai ke je suis 
Vaice de lisle de Gersui, 
Ki est en mer ver I'occident ; 
Al fieu de Normandie assent." 

The poet Abraham Cowley, who was some time 
upon the island, wrote from his quarters in Eliza- 
beth Castle, where also Lord Clarendon wrote a 
portion of his history — 

" For you must know, kind Sir, that verse does not in this 
island grow, 
No more than sack." 

The usual insular conditions of isolation and 
constant intermarriages for generations probably 
explain the fact that the imagination of the 
Jersiais never rose to much height of poetical 
and artistic creation. All the same, it sees its 
name occasionally in the history of English art 



FORT CHEER. 85 

and literature, Millais, the President of the Royal 
Academy was of a Jersey family, our own Henry 
Thoreau was of Jersey descent. Mrs. Manley, 
whom Swift scorned as a New Woman of her time, 
was born here in 1667. Her father, Sir Roger 
Manley, was Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey. She 
early lost her mother ; her father, of literary tastes, 
paid Httle attention to his cliildren, so that they 
ran wild. She was early deluded into a false 
marriage (at least, so she herself told), and began 
that adventurous career of love-making, novel- 
writing, and quarrelling with the '' Tatler's " Steele 
and Swift, quarrels that have made her quite as 
notorious as has her " New Atlantis." Swift once 
rebuked Stella that she spelled no better than 
" the Mrs. Manleys," by which he must have 
meant the New Woman of the time. One of 
his "Tatler" papers represents her under one of 
the vague personifications common to those essay- 
ists as poisoning by smells and restoring to life by 
the same. He wrote of her more plainly when he 
told Addison '• she writes as if she had about two 
thousand epithets and fine words packed up in 
a bag, pulled them out by the handful, and 
strewed them over her paper, where about once 
in about five hundred times they happen to be 
right." Swift might have improved his own man- 
ner while so severe upon the New Woman who 
was learning to write, and said " one quarter of her 
epithets," etc. Mrs. Manley is reported to have 
been of as scandalous private life as she was of 
public writing, but we may remember in our idea 
of her that she was " New " and that all her 
censors and judges were men who scorned a wo- 
man writing in direct imitation of the men of her 



85 HIRED FURNISHED. 

day, having no other model. But all this was 
long after the little girl ran wild within the precincts 
of Elizabeth Castle, in Jersey, till she was eight 
years old, when the family returned to England. 
Her story and fame really have no relation to 
these islands, for she was English, a race then 
foreign here. " I am heartily sorry for her," Swift 
wrote to Stella ; " she has generous principles for 
one of her sort, and a great deal of good sense 
and invention ; she is about forty, homely, and 
very fat." 

Abraham Cowley was here not on business of 
the Muses, but on business of the King and 
Queen. He at that time resided in France with 
the Jermyn family and was trusted with a cipher 
correspondence between Charles I. and Henri- 
etta Maria. 

'^ In that gray house between the Spanish chest- 
nuts on Gorey Heights, George Eliot wrote 'Janet's 
Repentance,' " said Mrs. Dove. On May 12, 1857, 
she wrote in her journal of the blooming orchards 
hereabout and of the castle. She hated the wind ; 
it is curious how often she mentions winds with 
annoyance in her journals, continually complain- 
ing of them. So she meant to express gentle con- 
tentment when she wrote " Jersey trees have no 
distressed look about them as if they were ever 
driven back harshly by the winds. It is like an 
inland slope suddenly carried to the coast," she 
wrote of this part of the island. 

" To hate the wind, unless indeed one be utterly 
devoted to one's frizzes, which George Ehot was 
not, — does it seem possible?" said Amy. 

Hate the wind 1 not one of those fair and 
brave islanders could understand how such a hate 



* FORT CHEER. 87 

could be, they in their wind-singing home where 
rarely come raging tempests. To them the wind 
means music and soft caressing. To George Eliot 
the wind meant only a bother. She was born in 
a flat, windless country and was not cradled with 
its lullaby. Moreover, she never liked wild ele- 
ments of nature or character. She had no sym- 
pathy for what we may call the Gothic in humanity. 
The wild north wind to her was only a lawless 
blusterer ; for the Arctic fields, the beetling preci- 
pices, the gloomy mountains and valleys of which 
he sings, she cared nothing at all. No romance 
was in her spirit, the mystery of our outlying uni- 
verse had no fascination for her ; personal comfort 
was her greatest good. To her there was no 
mystery in life, all is to be understood by a care- 
ful and conscientious study of human nature and 
the interplay of character. When she wrote her 
least realistic and therefore most romantic novel, 
she must even leave a land where the loud winds 
are keen, and place a story without hero or 
heroine but only with characters, in a sunny city 
where, even if the winds do blow down from the 
Apennines at seasons, George Eliot never stayed 
to hear what they say. 

How different from Victor Hugo, who asked 
concerning the wind the questions we ask concern- 
ing our souls: "Whence? Whither? Wliy?" 
and who heard them sing all the legends of the 
ages, all the music and the poetry of our divinely 
created earth. 

" George Eliot could never be a poet, with all 
her conscientious trying," said a Dove. " She 
might have heard ' choirs invisible ' while she 
Hved had she been a poet and loved the wind." 



88 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" As you do," smiled the other Dove. 

Which was a family joke. Once in the height 
of the palm-reading fashion a hand had been read 
as that of an artist, " probably a musician, one 
subtly sensitive to sweet sounds and gifted in in- 
terpreting nature's most noble and most subtle 
emotions through music." 

" Stay ! " said the owner of the hand. " I do not 
play a single musical instrument, I understand not a 
note of music. I care for no music except of the 
wind and the sea, and such as reminds me of them." 

" Precisely what I mean," answered the un- 
abashed palmist. 

Ah, Bright Eyes, laughing, serious, sweet Bright 
Eyes, with native grace enhanced by utter artless- 
ness and unpretension, you did not know, that 
sunny spring day when that Jersey party of ancient 
island and more ancient Norman hneage, proud to 
have been Norman freemen before the Bastard 
made earls and dukes of his vulgar adventurers, ad- 
mitted to its circle a pair of Doves in whose Anglo- 
Saxon veins the Norman drop was small and pale, 
what an unfading memory you added to the 
choicest memories of two lives. You never 
thought that, in years to come, with roaring tides 
between those birds of the far West and your 
island shores, those bright faces and pleasant voices 
of Tom, Karl, and Annie, Florrie, Amy, George, 
Philip, Ada, Belle, would live in fadeless spring- 
time together with a vision of smihng island and 
radiant sea, so long as those Doves know summer 
from winter, day from night ! 

How much those Jersiais and the Americans 
found in common besides doughnuts, Sunday 



FORT CHEER. 89 

morning baked beans and pie as England knows 

them not ! How freely they criticised the English, 

to whom all were faithful friends and true, loving 

them as brothers and sisters, even as husband 

and wife ! How much they found in common in 

their forms of English speech kept apart on both 

sides of the ocean, on island and on continent, 

from the exotic adoptions and corruptions of 

Ensfland itself since America inherited and the 

Channel Islands accepted, the dominant and 

domineering English tongue ! Jersey habitually 

speaks three languages. Its native mediaeval 

French, as their Duke William spoke it, has 

developed into something new and strange in the 

course of centuries ; they nearly all speak English ; 

and the educated speak continental French. As 

they say themselves, not one of these languages do 

they speak perfectly, which few do, even those to a 

language born. In the English the Jersiais seem 

never able to deal successfully v;ith shall and will^ 

as neither do the Scotch or Irish, however highly 

educated. It has been known of Scotchmen at 

Oxford to refuse help on this point, preferring to 

prove their nationality by their ignorance. Jersey 

has not spoken English so long as America. 

When the Mayflower took the Stuart English over 

the sea the Channel Islands still universally spoke 

their andque Norman-French. At the beginning 

of this century that same French was the language 

par excellmce, and only the educated portion 

spoke English. They spoke it with a sort of 

hidalgo contempt for it as for all things not of 

ancient Normandy, and always as a foreign tongue. 

Even yet the Norman-French is the domestic 

language of many who never utter a word of it 



90 HIRED FURNISHED. 

away from home. All legal business is carried on 
in French, all legislative and judicial action. " We 
dehberate in French," said a deputy, "but we 
speak English." In all the twelve parishes of 
Jersey and in every church one of every two Sun- 
day services is in French, although the service is 
Church of England. Bright Eyes tells us that the 
opening and closing prayer of her Dorcas society 
is always in French. It is the same, perhaps to a 
slightly less degree, in Guernsey. In Sark the 
insular French is entirely the language of the 
island ; religious service in English is held only 
during the summer, when some visiting clergyman 
officiates, for the benefit of other visitors. In all 
the islands the changes in their original language 
have been diiferently produced by circumstances 
peculiar to themselves. The Jersey-French is a 
medley of old French intermingled with modern 
expressions and Gallicized English words curiously 
pronounced. Fifty years ago there was a marked 
difference of language, even among the different 
parishes. A Jerseyman, writing then of his native 
isle, declares that there were more dialects in 
Jersey than in ancient Greece. Of late years an 
English garrison on the island has helped greatly 
to spread English among the lower classes. In 
such case the mixture of north-country Enghsh, 
cockney English, and the island accent is fearfully 
and wonderfully made. The landlady of the Doves, 
widow of an Englishman, served this mixture to her 
English-speaking tenants and assured them that 
they need never be bilious if they '• het enough hile 
to carry off the boil." The same lingual witchbroth 
sometimes gives the parish of Saint Ouen three 
names, — Saint Euens, Santowan, Samt Owen. 



FORT CHEER. 9 1 

An interesting specimen of this insular Jersey- 
French is here extracted from a Httle book purport- 
ing to be a series of letters written by a ce7itenier 
(constable) of St. Ouen, from Paris, during the 
exhibition of 1889. He is represented as — 

Bram Bilo (Chant'nyi d'St.-Ou), San viage k 
I'exposicion ov sa chiethe femme Nancy, et chin 
tchi vites dans la villa de Paris. 

Paris, septembre 1889. 

MoussiEU, — Nos y v'chin dans chu Paris, €^ 
pis hier 6 s^. 

J 'nos embertchimes avan'hier dans le batd de 
Granville, man couesin Lies et ma belle-methe etais 
v'nus nos condithe dans la van, avec not boete. 

J'eumes une fiethe peux justement comma le 
bat6 tchitai la cauchie, car, ma balle-metha tchdtai 
v'nua dans le steam pour vais la machine, s'etrauli 
hor-bor las fiers an I'air an montan sus la plianche 
pour s'en r'all^. L6 captaina n'arreti pon pour la 
r'petchi, mais y criyi " Go ahead," sans pus s'jene ; 
heutheuseman qu'un matlo dans un bate la r'petchi 
par san cotillon. J'cr^ pas qu'ouP an mouoro oquo 
chute fais. 

J'avaimes empaut^ das sauchisses et unmio d'muo- 
thus dans un pagas, et j'acati eunna boutailledebiere. 

Enfin j'arrivimas k Paris ! Tchi train ! Tchi comba 
a chute station ! Nancy m^ tdnai tight par le bras 
da crainte d6 s'edgethai, et, ma f(6, ou'l av6 raison. 
Yen ave du monde at du bri ! ! J'en savais pon dans 
tchi hotel alle, et tandi que j' regardais atouora da 
me, un homme s'en vint m'ditha : " Mylor cherche 
qualqua chose?" Vethe-d'ja, j'lis dis, puoriaz-vous 
m'inditchi un hotel respectable et pas trop chi ? 
Y repouni qu'oui, et la-d'sus j'nos n'allons — y voulai 
portai ma casse, mais " not for Joe," n'hs laisse pas 
s'fit Nancy, ches p'tetre un pickpocket ! 

Y nos condisi a un grand hotel, mais I'proprie- 



92 HIRED FURNISHED. 

taithe nos dis tchi n'prenai pas des gens de not' 
espece. '' Queman," j'lis dis, "savous bein que j'sis 
Chant'nyi a St.-Ou ! ! " Via tchi rradouochi, et nos 
v'cliin dans s'n'otel, au siexieme estage. 

Le preumi jour, j'nos proumnimes dans la ville. 
Y'en ave ti d'chu monde, et des carosses et des 
tramway, et des boutiques, et des eglyises ! My 
eye, tchi grande ville ! 

J'montimes dans un tremway tchi nos condysi lien 
comme de St.-Aubin a Gouerey sans sorti d'la ville. 
J'vinmes des gardins, des pars, des pythamides, des 
eglyises et des estatues. 

Nancy fut tout-a-fe chotchie par ches estatues la, 
et de vie, y'a d'tchi faithe ruogi escrivain — y sont 
presques toutes nues coumme un ver, ches estatues 
la, pas tan seuleman eunne pathe de cauches. 

J'dis au coachman du tremway que j'tai honteux, 
et i'm reponni que probablyemon si I'presidan ave seu 
que j'nos en vinmes, il ethai fai mettre des keminses a 
ses estatues. J'cre casi q'chu coachman Ik s'motchai 
m6. 

Opres nos etre proumnes tchique temps, vin 
I'euthe du dine. 

J'entrimes dans un restauran et je d'mandi au 
ouaiteur tcheque y'ave a mangi. Y nos aporti un 
papi sus tchique etai ecri chein qu' y'ave, mais j'ny 
comprins rein, ni Nancy entou. L'ouaiteur nos dis 
qu' nou zave ammor de qu'manchi par le potage. 
Ch'la m'etonni, j'lis dis qu'k St.-Ou, nou qu'manchi 
par la soupe. La-d'sus y nos apporte eunne bollee 
de bouillon tchi'l apple du consume. 

Enfin, opres qu' j'eumes dine, j'nos proumnimes 
oquo eunne demieuthe, et pis coumme Nancy etai 
un mio faillie, jVentrimes a not' hotel et j'nos 
quochimes ben lasses. 

J'vos ecrithai oquo prechainement si ch'la vos 
fait plyiaisi. 

A betos, vot' vier anmin, 

Bram Bilo. 



FORT CHEER. 93 

"Please sign the paper which is pleated^^' the 
boy who brought the cider told Mrs. Dove, and 
she knew he meant \\\q folded paper, even though 
he did not say so, nor yeiplie. 

But when another asked in perfectly pronounced 
English, " Are these tins of Homer for you ? '' she 
could never in the world have guessed what he 
meant to say but for her knowledge of French. 
" Homer " would never suggest aught to eat, 
unless one remembers that homard in French 
means lobster. Yet again, when one serving man 
complained, in perfectly unforeign English, "John 
takes too much foot," it was necessary to know 
the meaning of the French saying, // prend trop 
de pied, to understand his good English. 

Once upon a time Karl told them a bread riot 
was stirred against one of the Lemprieres who 
had bought up and stored great quantities of 
grain. It was chiefly a woman's riot, and women 
went shouting up and down : — 

" Allons,mourons sur la plieche pustot que par 
une disette languissante, le bouan Gui nos a don- 
net du grain et jelle garderons en d^pit d'schez 
bougres de Lempriere et d'lus cour." 

Mrs. Dove was much less interested in the story 
of old Prynne imprisoned in this Castle and writ- 
ing poor verses, or in the tragedy of the Ban- 
deneUis, father and son, trying to escape by ropes 
of sheets only to be dashed in pieces on the 
rocks, than she was in the brave protracted 
defence by a woman. 

" Just as sure as one comes across the history 
of a castle anywhere," she declared, somewhat 
recklessly, " just so sure history tells of an obsti- 
nate defence by a woman who may not have 



94 HIRED FURNISHED. 

a voice in governing because she cannot fight (by 
the same reason she has no right to the teeth in 
her head). There was the brave defence of 
Pevense)' Castle by Lady Pelham, 'yhowr awnn 
pore I. Pelham ' ; the Casde at Pontorson by 
Du Gueschn's sister Julienne, after her traitorous 
maids had betrayed her to the Enghsh ; Peel 
Castle, by the dauntless Countess of Essex ; Gorey 
Castle, by Lady de Carteret ; then, if you want 
strategy, there was clever Mrs. Hungerford during 
the Parliamentary struggles, who telegraphed from 
St. Aubin's to her husband, seneschal of Elizabeth 
Castle. She established an entire code of signals 
by means of her clothes line, and by his glass, her 
imprisoned husband could distinguish a shirt be- 
tween two petticoats or vice versa^ shirts between 
sheets, or sheets between shirts, and read the whole 
domestic history of his family, and the condition 
of affairs on the island, punctuated by stockings 
and handkerchiefs." 

" To be sure, women have always been cruelly 
down-trodden," replied the other Dove. " Have 
you not read of that Jersey woman, wife of Pierre 
Fallu, who, one Sunday in March, 1552, took a 
pair of paternosters to church and refused to give 
them up to the Connetable on demand. Perhaps 
you remember her punishment? " 

The laugh was against the lady. For, as every- 
body knew, Madame Fallu was condemned by the 
court for her popish contumacy — that her hus- 
band be sent to prison ! 

'' Every night at midnight," Legend-gatherer 
George was saying, '' the ghostly sight was visible 
to whoever peeped from windows. Everybody 
was within doors, for everybody would have as soon 



FORT CHEER. 95 

have met grim death as that spectral procession 
moving slowly across Gorey common just over 
there. Every night as the clock struck twelve 
it moved, an ancient procession the like of which 
had never been seen by living eyes upon the 
island. A procession of silent figures, in cowls 
and long monkly garments, followed a coffin 
which seemed to float in the air. The long pall 
trailed upon the ground, the grim train followed 
silently and slow with bowed heads. Whither 
the ever restless dead was bound, going every 
midnight to a grave it never reached, or if found, 
never to rest therein, nobody knew. Nobody, 
indeed, dared to ask." 

"Does it pass yet? " 

" No," said the narrator, solemnly. " One 
night as the silent train wended its way across the 
common a posse of live men barred the way. 
They tumbled the coffin from off the shoulders 
concealed under the pall. They stripped the 
monkly garments from the ghosts and found, — 
what do you think ? — a coffin full of " run " French 
brandy and some of the most respected inhabit- 
ants of the island. Jersey was a nest of smugglers 
in those days. I have heard old men tell of cutters 
darting between here and France, drawing scarcely 
two inches and running with sails flat upon the 
water. Steam has spoiled all that," and the dig- 
nified and law-abiding Jerseyman almost sighed. 

"You have heard of Pinel First, King of the 
Ecrehous?" asked somebody. Everybody had 
heard of him, of his abdication since the Queen's 
death, and his recent death in the snug har 
bor of the hospital. For years he and his wife 
lived alone upon a tiny islet of the Ecrehous, 



9^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

a heap of rough rocks between Jersey and France, 
forming an island of nine square miles at low tide, 
at high tide only two, and, like all the other Chan- 
nel Islands, once a part of the Continent. Even 
these two miles are cut up by intricate channels. 
Upon one of the bits are the remains of ruins of 
a thirteenth century abbey built there when the 
Ecrehous rocks were the top of a hill belonging to 
France, and where neighboring villages went to 
hear mass now that the sea had made an impass- 
able marsh between them and the church at Port 
Bail in France. The Channel Islands themselves 
were separated from the Continent during the 
eighth century. 

Upon these rocks King Pinel and his Queen had 
their kingdom, — monarchs of all they surveyed, 
and their royal palace one squalid room. King 
Pinel I. was a wild, aboriginal Jerseyman, rough 
of speech and manner, living chiefly by vraic 
gathering. At low tide his special kingdom was 
some rods in circumference, at high it was 
scarcely more than the ground covered by his 
hut. The Queen, his wife, managed to cultivate 
one or two spots of sand where the tides came but 
a few times a year, and thus they lived in royal 
state. He accepted the title given him in jest as 
his legal and legitimate title, and felt his royalty 
such a fact that once he communicated with a 
sister sovereign, doubtless the only sovereign of 
whom he ever heard. He or his queen wove a 
couple of fancy work-baskets, which he sent to the 
Queen of England and the Princess Beatrice. 
In return, the Queen sent him a comfortable coat 
in which he at once had his photograph taken. 
One day King Pinel came over with word that 



FORT CHEER. 97 

certain strangers had left some casks upon the 
verge of his kingdom and he suspected that they 
contained French brandy waiting to be '' run " after 
dark. Immediately, custom-house officers sailed 
away to the lonely Ecrehous and brought back the 
casks. In the presence of higher officers they were 
opened and found to contain sea-water. King 
Pinel was hand-in-glove with all the runners. How 
he probably smote his shanks with glee, when 
he pictured the discomfiture of the excise men ! 

The long table was spread out-of-doors. Doubt- 
less it was a groaning board under so many 
good things, but nobody kept still enough to 
hear its complaining. Exquisite Jersey cider 
made from orchards such as George Eliot ap- 
proved, peaceful untormented orchards upon se- 
rene slopes, yielding cider without a thought of 
sourness or tang of bitterness, pure juice of golden 
apples, not too sweet yet not brut and with sting- 
ing sparkle caught from the ever-present sea ; 
sandwiches of ham, beef, chicken, cheese, with 
mustard or without, French saucissoft or English 
sausages, as one should or would, a vast pile of 
" wonders " in compliment to the Doves. 

"Shall you have some apricot pie?" 

" I shall^'' answered the Dove addressed, " al- 
though I need it not, but because you name it ^ pie,' 
as it is, and not ' tart,' as it is not, being covered." 

" Of course we always call it pie," declared the 
Jersiais. " We never are done disputing with 
English people concerning the proper difference 
between a covered pie and an open tart." 

" Hast thou a strawberry mark upon thy left 
arm ? " fondly asked one of the Americans. 

7 



98 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" We recognize the same distinction, a distinc- 
tion that was English until London fell under 
the influence of French cooks. Because French 
cooks call their meat pies pdfe, London cooks 
thought it fine cookly manners to translate J'dfe 
into pastry and confine pie strictly to meat-pas- 
tries. London claims to hold the sceptre of the 
world's English, yet is not above corrupting the 
good old English of its forefathers at the bidding 
of cooks. In almost all the provinces, the rural 
parts of England, pie is pie to this day. Those 
provincial old maids were tarnished by seasons in 
London who disliked to mention rhubarb because 
it suggested medicine, so offered their guests por- 
tions of ^spring- fruit-tart.' Which was the true 
Englishman of the two who met at a picnic, the 
Londoner who asked for ' a bit of that fruit tart,* 
or the country squire who answered ' there 's only 
this borry poie^ (berry pie)?" 

In 1676, Lady Fanshawe wrote during her for- 
eign travels, " They have a fruit called a massard, 
like a cherry but different, and makes the best pie 
I ever eat." In 1705, Dr. King wrote in his "Art 
of Cookery," 

" Choose your materials right, your seasoning fix 
And with your fruit resplendent sugar mix, 
And thence of course the figure will arise 
And elegance adorn the surface of your pyes." 

When, in 1739, West wrote to Walpole, it was 
certain he had no intention of writing other than 
pure Enghsh. Yet we read in the letters promise 
of " a gooseberry pie big as anything." Twenty 
years later a plain Sussex tradesman, Thomas 
Turner, to whom the English of Walpole's cor- 
respondents and King Charles' courtiers was 



FORT CHEER. 99 

good enough for use^ wrote in his diary a resolve 
"to eat nothing for breakfast but water-gruel, 
varied occasionally by a fruit Pye." In 1813 the 
future Cardinal Newman wrote to his mother from 
Oxford, " We live well here, we have gooseberry, 
damson, and apricot pies." Had he been told 
they were not pies, but tarts, he might have won- 
dered how many tarts the Knave of Hearts could 
have stolen that summer's day when we all spoke 
English, or why busybodies had a finger in every 
pie that was fish, flesh, or fowl, and therefore with- 
out plums. We, too, if inquisitive, might ask why 
it is that we never see, even in London, a tart-dish, 
but only the pie-dish, in which the " tart " comes 
to the table. Does even London ever hear of 
a mince-/(a;r/, albeit absolutely void of aught but 
fruit. Tom Moore wrote of — 

" The cold apple-pie his lordship would stuff in 
For breakfast to save the expense of hot muffin." 

Surely England's laureates write in English. 
What was Southey's language when in 1789 he 
wrote his Pindaric "Ode to Gooseberry Pie"? 
Charles Lamb was an undeniable Londoner. 
" George Dyer has introduced me to the table 
of an agreeable old gentleman who gives hot legs 
of mutton and grape pies," he wrote in 1800. 

Ruskin surely wrote English superior to ordi- 
nary Londoners. In his autobiography he tells 
of his childish enjoyment of gathering the fruit 
for "cherry pies." Yet we do not speak English 
if, being Jersiais or American, v/e do not ask for 
tart when we wish for pie 1 

" Yes, Bright Eyes, I shall have some of the 
apricot ' pie.' " 



100 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" Under the sheeny blue and gold," said Cap- 
tain Philippe, who has Jersey history at his finger- 
tips, " Under this motionless surface Jersey chimes 
and crosses lie. At the Reformation, to which 
Jersey took most readily, having always been under 
the influence of a high class of Huguenot min- 
isters, fled from France, all church images, chimes, 
and crosses were sold to France to help pay for 
fortifying Elizabeth Castle, and much against the 
wishes of Jersey people. The vessel bearing them 
away to St. Malo struck upon a rock and sank, to 
the joy, mingled with sorrow, of many a Protestant 
Jersey man. They are down among the mermen 
now, but what use can that pagan people make of 
them in their green-vaulted aisles?" 

"Mermen! Do you imagine the touchy mer- 
folk did not move their habitations from the Eng- 
lish Channel with the first steamboat that churned 
up their roofs? What sort of a degenerate must 
the merman be who would cling to green aisles 
into which a mass of cinders came ploughing now 
and then, to say nothing of champagne bottles 
and bones of fish, flesh, and fowl?" 

"The mer-folk may be gone, but disembodied 
human spirits, as defiant of water as of air, may 
wander there among submerged churches and the 
ruins of their mortal homes. They would know 
the uses of holy chimes and crosses. I wonder 
we never hear those chimes when the Channel is 
as calm as now. During a phenomenally low tide 
in 1735, when Jersey was left in the midst of a 
wilderness of weedy pinnacles and domes of rock, 
the remains of a submerged village were distinctly 
seen. How many others there may be nobody 
knows, left from the days when one could walk 



FORT CHEER. lOI 

dryshod from here to the centre of the diocese 
at Coutances, to which all of the now * Channel 
Islands' belonged. 

" In 1203, the Ecrehous became an island, hav- 
ing for a long time previously been high and dry 
land in the midst of a marsh. It was given to the 
monks of Val Richer to build a church to God 
and the Virgin as the inhabitants (it was ti'es peu- 
plee) could no longer walk over to Port Bail to 
hear the mass. Ancient MSS. speak of various 
parishes of Coutances now under this blue and 
gold. There our chimes and crosses lie." 

" Listen," said one of the company, " I hear 
them now." 

Everybody listened, all heard. 

On the soft wings of the wind, floating dreamily 
over the parapets of Fort Cheer came gushes of 
mysterious music. It came from No-Man's-Land, 
bound by neither space nor time, the infinite vague- 
ness where hides forever the poetry that never 
enters into words, never reveals itself save by sub- 
tle thrills that touch the spirit and flee whither 
even thought cannot follow them. It was faint 
and far enough away, yet near enough to echo of 
dashing wine cups, and ringing pitchers of silver 
and gold at the bridal feast of pagan Rollo with 
the Christian princess Gilla. Shivering amid the 
deeper tones of wassail, one might almost hear 
the plaint of a girl's grief at her forced bridal with 
the barbarian enemy of her weak royal father and 
of France ; the sixty-years-old husband who 
would behead all her French attendants in his 
own Norman capital, Rouen ; the girlish wee^- '- 1 
and shrill lamentation of an age when women 
wept as loudly as the children they rarely ceased 



102 HIRED FURNISHED. 

to be. Yet nobody fancied it the echo of a bridal 
an hundred and fifty years before William the 
Conqueror was born, the bridal by means of which 
Normandy became a recognized duchy and fief 
of France, for now the sound of silvery chimes 
floated slumberously over the grassy parapets, 
chimes soft and low, chimes wrapped in space, 
in clouds, in foam, chimes swinging upon sway- 
ing tides in cool green twilight. Their melody 
seemed even to come nearer as the slumberous 
wind wavered to and fro. 

'' French excursionists from Port Bail," ex- 
plained Captain Philippe. " Coming over to 
do Jersey in eight hours. They are singing to 
keep their courage up upon the raging deep and 
before facing the perils of a foreign tour. We 
have many such every summer. Excursions come 
all the way from Paris and ^ do ' us in sixteen 
hours from start to finish at the Paris railway 
station. We often go down to the pier in town, 
to se"e these excursions arrive. Heavens what a 
chatter! It's exactly as if flocks of wild geese 
were suddenly released from captivity. They are 
usually small shop people, clubs of them who 
almost never leave home save on a day's excur- 
sion, and this is a momentous event in their lives. 
They begin to criticise ces Anglaises the instant 
they land, and with a spice of venom added to 
every criticism, we think, by their vague impres- 
sion that our islands rightfully belong to them and 
that perfidious Albion somehow did them out of 
u They fully believe us bowed down with woe 
(and England's yoke), because we are no longer 
French. The whole company gets into excursion 
cars and rides round the island, stopping only for 



FORT CHEER. IO3 

dinner or luncheon at some of the tourist hotels, 
then back again to their steamer, and in their own 
beds by midnight, under firm conviction for the 
rest of their mortal lives that they have made the 
tour of modern England, and know an fond la 
betise anglaise, ^ puisque f y etais^ Should we tell 
them we have been united to England longer than 
Scotland has, than Wales or Ireland, they would 
only shrug their shoulders and say ' Tant pis pour 
voiis.^ " 

"" We hear them as far off as this sometimes," 
dainty Flo was saying, " moaning with sea-sickness 

— nobody is ever so sick as a Frenchman — and 
sobbing, ' O ma mere, si tii savais comme je 
souffre.^ " 

Everybody laughed. Everybody always does 
laugh at a Frenchman's almost invariable devotion 
to his mother, whether on earth or in heaven, 

— not that the devotion is ridiculous, but his man- 
ner of exploiting it. 

After luncheon, a walk round the coast, passing 
the Jersey Lion on the way. Its head is up, its 
aspect watchful, one eye is upon Coutances spires, 
the other upon a mite of a steamer bustling over 
to France. It never turns its head even when 
apostrophized in five languages, Parisian-French, 
Yankee-French, Jersey-French, Jersey-Enghsh and 
New England-English, for it is only a rock after 
all. Legend-gatherer George bids them notice 
wherever they see them, the farmhouses and cots, 
where the widow has fastened herself like a soli- 
tary barnacle, upon the original homestead. Mrs. 
Dove looked upon them with sadness. "To this 
it comes," she thouglit, "to this it all comes ; the 
happy bride who came in her youthful hope and 



I04 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Strength to a husband's home, who worked with 
him, planted, tended, watered, weeded, harvested, 
sinks in time away before ever-encroaching youth. 
The world is youth's ; the power, the strength, the 
joy thereof. When youth comes, youth goes, march 
we must in the awful procession, the bride becomes 
in time only a barnacle on her son's rear wall." 

" You see," said Legendary George cheerily, 
" we house our widows well. When a man dies, 
and the son and his wife own the homestead, that 
little addition is built to the main house that she 
may still live on the premises." 

"How very kind," agreed Mrs. Dove. "And 
when it is the wife who dies? Does the husband 
then retire into one of these widow-pens ? " 

"He usually takes another wife," explained 
Legendary George, — "a young one to help him 
on the farm." 

Some of these widow-pens seemed as ancient 
as the house itself, some almost new. Occa- 
sionally one seemed even older than the house, 
more weak and faded. " The son who built that 
cheated his mother with cheap workmanship and 
material," said suspicious Mrs. Dove. 

She said no more, but deep in her heart she 
bitterly felt the injustice of social and political 
laws, that doom a woman to become so absolutely 
a part of her home that she has no horizon, no 
atmosphere, outside of it, that enjoins upon her 
to be only a home-maker, to live in her pans and 
kettles, to become a part of her carpets, to take 
every stain in the floors, every crack in the walls, 
every darn in the curtains, to the very centre of 
her consciousness, only to be ejected from every- 
thino; when her master dies. 



FORT CHEER. IO5 

" No," one of the Jerseymen was saying, " we 
have no definite law of primogeniture, but the spirit 
of our laws is decidedly in favor of keeping 
property and estates always in the same family." 

On the lintels of many of the Jersey houses is 
the date of erection carved in stone. Often this 
date is accompanied by the united initials of the 
husband and wife who first owned the house and 
lived in it. When this first couple were a bridal 
pair, building their nest, the fact is sometimes 
indicated perpetually by two sculptured hearts 
transfixed by an arrow surmounted by the initials 
and with the date beneath. The Doves knew 
this was a practice not peculiar to the Channel 
Islands, for they had seen the same in Sussex, and 
they wondered if it were not some relic of habit 
from ancient Northman days. In Sussex some- 
times what the Doves called an "epitaph" ac- 
companied the initials and date. They never 
saw, but Sussex Archgeological Journals told them 
of one antique inscription carved in fine relief — 

'■' When we are dead 
And lay 'd in grave, 
And all our bones are rotter, 
By this shall we 
Remembered be 
Or else we were forgotten. 

"R. & D. T." 

Who were R. and D. T. ? Who remembers 
them? How long have they " lay'd in grave," and 
where ? 

Fools, fools, fools ! Our poor shifting dust, 
thinking to keep its memory on earth by pyra- 
mids, by colossal tombs, by massive lintels with 
deep inscriptions ! 



I06 HIRED FURNISHED. 

"A classical dictionary is better than any in- 
scription," said the Dove lightly, who thought 
not admiringly of such short cuts to learning. 
He referred to the fact that not far from St. 
Helier's is the ancient farmhouse in which our old 
friend Lempriere was born in 1766. He was an 
Oxford man of Dr. Johnson's college (Pembroke), 
took holy orders, and was always a schoolmaster 
in England, where he died in 1822. The famous 
dictionary was finished when he was but 22. He 
was three times married and left many children. 
The farmhouse in which he was born is quaint 
and gray. On the lintel of the door one may 
read, "C. L. P. ^z- S. C. L. 1766." As his father's 
name was Charles, these were probably the initials 
and the marriage year of his parents. What was 
meant by 83 nobody could tell. 

Over the great chimney-piece in the kitchen on 
a lozenge-shaped stone is the inscription — 

" 1647 

M. D. 

E." 

Who were they, M. D. and E., in the year that 
Charles the First still wore his head, and his 
vicious son not yet King of Jersey ? 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. 10/ 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. 

" I KNOW of nothing more utterly discouraging 
than to be disappointed in one you have trusted." 

Mrs. Dove said this as if it had never been said 
before. One would suppose from her face and 
voice that hers was the first soul since the morn- 
ing stars sang together into which the iron of 
disappointment had entered. Her whole ap- 
pearance suggested spiritual bedragglement and 
forlornness ; the condition of a glowing soul that 
had chased a rainbow and returned from afar 
laden only with mud. 

" Chestnut," remarked her mate. 

" Only four times," and the mud grew heavier. 
" Pity, if four times finding her in this state and 
remarking upon it must needs be chestnutty. Go 
and look at her yourself and see if you don't say 
as much, and more." 

He went. He saw. He returned. 

" Only a trifle redder in the face than usual, and 
I believe she is rattling the dishes more than I 
ever heard her, but even that might — " 

" You know perfectly that when we came home 
yesterday and the day before it was precisely the 
same. Martin's face was red, her eyes very 
queer, her hair fairly stood on end ; she was all 
trembling and tottering, so that she leaned against 
the wall and stuttered and rambled as she talked. 



I08 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Yesterday it was even some time before she 
opened the door to us and then it was with some- 
thing in her hand that she tried to hide." 

*' It looked to me hke an innocent dust brush/' 
said he. 

Sadly, solemnly she whispered — 

" I fear it was a bottle." 

The house of their proprietor as well as their 
own opened upon that blooming garden ; so did 
the cottage in half of which Martin had lived for 
years. Thus it happened that, although Martin 
owed them service only during the forenoons she 
was always ready to skirt the garden and enter 
the ever-open back door whenever she could 
serve them by some little short-timed attention. 
As their front door key was evidently from some 
" misfit parlors," and turned with difficulty, she 
frequently let them in when they rang their bell 
upon their return from their rambles. At first 
nothing peculiar had been in her manner or ap- 
pearance. For the first week or two she had 
opened the green door, cool, silent, respectful, as 
they had always known her. Then came the 
anxious unhappy day that she opened the green 
door to them with whirlwind motion and fury- 
ridden countenance. 

"What if anybody should have dehrium tremens 
in a dove-cote," said Mrs. Dove, with a scared 
look. "Why, there isn't room." 

The speaker's idea of this horrible malady was 
not very well defined. It was a sort of decadently 
artistic incoherency of snakes racing through the 
sitting-room hissing, up and down the stairs and 
dining-room walls. She was indignant when the 
other Dove laughed aloud. 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. IO9 

** Excuse me," he said. '*' But the idea of Mar- 
tin taking up more room than she can help does 
tickle one ! " 

As it happened, Martin was not their only 
annoyance just then. One or two persons had 
called and gone away without leaving cards. When 
the Doves were deeply buried in their reading and 
writing, as they usually were when at home, it was 
no simple matter to answer the door-bell. They 
were little accustomed to the sound of door-bells, 
and had not yef reahzed the responsibihty of hir- 
ing a furnished one. In London, all they knew of 
bells was that a handle must be pulled when they 
desired to enter a house, and that somebody must 
have pulled their own London door-bell before the 
servant brought them a card or message. Now at 
the disquieting sound so very near, one or the other 
of them would look up in mild surprise to ask, 
" Was that a bell?" as if it were as hkely to be 
flute or bassoon. Whereupon the other in as 
sweet a daze would murmur, " Is it a door-bell? " 
as if trams or trolleys might be clanging down their 
alley. Then the other would murmur, " Is it 
ours ? " 

Finally, these momentous questions settled, the 
necessity was recognized that somebody must go 
to the door. Should they telegraph out of the 
back windows to Martin that visitors were at the 
front, or go to the door themselves ? That ques- 
tion was generally settled by finding that Martin 
was not at home, or at least not about the back of 
her cottage. Then only remained the question 
which of the Doves should answer the door-bell. 
This depended upon which was nearest to the 
surface of the surging tide of books and papers, 



no HIRED FURNISHED. 

and was a matter not to be decided off-hand. The 
result was that when the green sht between the 
white walls of the Dove-cote was opened, behold 
nobody was there. 

" Who would imagine the Jersiais so impa- 
tient?" they remarked the third time this hap- 
pened. " Whoever it is quickly turns the corner 
and is out of sight. I wish we were not so near 
the corner or that they would leave their cards." 

" Probably they are glad of any excuse, like our 
undergrads at Oxford." 

This always cleared their brows. It brought 
up such a pretty picture of one trembling freshman 
ringing at their door, and a shivering group on the 
opposite side of the street rushing wildly away 
when the door was opened. 

" How they must have hated us for knowing 
their parents and for inviting them," the Doves 
laughed. " No men on the face of the earth are 
so bashful as young Englishmen." 

" That reminds me," said Mrs. Dove ; " here is 
the account I have just finished of one of those 
Oxford lunches where we were guests, and our 
hosts not freshmen. Let me read it to you : — 

'' The wide windows frame an exquisite view of 
a dreamy garden. Over that space of softest 
green bordered with brilliant flowers, the summer 
mist broods like an iridescent dove. Through 
the pebbled quad immediately beneath those wide 
windows, how many young feet have fared to and 
fro, feet that have since left immortal prints upon 
the sands of time. How many noble visions and 
high resolves that bare quad has known, does 
know, will know, when we are dust. 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. I I I 

" The room is large and handsome, with oaken 
panels and ceiling ; even though the stairs and 
landing outside seem beggarly to one who sees 
nothing to reverence in steps worn deep, and walls 
blackened by countless scholarly generations. Up 
and down this staircase, in and out this very 
room, fifty years and more ago, daily passed a 
knot of students and thinkers whose names have 
since been connected with the most important 
religious movements of the century. 

" The walls and mantels are covered with photo- 
graphs and 'engravings, with brackets, and home- 
like ornaments. Books are in profusion upon swing- 
ing cases ; the rugs are artistic upon the varnished 
floor. It is like the spacious and pleasant draw- 
ing-room of a refined home, without a trace of 
bachelor untidiness, or of the rowdiness not al- 
ways hidden in a Harvard student's room. The 
lunch table is another picture. Our young host 
is healthy, handsome, and (we hope) wise. 

" Five students and two strangers sit at table. 
Behind us a solemn ' scout ' passed noiselessly 
backward and forward, so noiselessly that when 
the lobster salad should give place to cold duck, 
behold ! no scout was there. 

" ' A don in the room below is giving a lunch,' 
grumbled our host ; ' he has gobbled the 
scout.' 

" Thereupon five Oxford men turned waiters, 
and, more or less dexterously, deposited salad 
plates upon the deep window-couches and else- 
where, resetting the table from the sideboard. 

'"' ' Ekker! jolly for the digegger,' they say with 
laughter. 

" What language is this, of ancient peoples and 



112 HIRED FURNISHED. 

forgotten times ? See what it is to be unlearned 
in learned Oxford ! 

" ' " Ekker " is exercise, don't you know? ' they 
explain ; ' '' digegger " is digestion. When a man 
walks in the park he takes a " pagger ; " when his 
people come to see him they are "straggers," or 
strangers.' 

"'Easy enough when you once get the swing,' 
said the youth known as ' Father WiUiam,' 
because of his thinning hair. ' Breakfast is 
" brekker " in the Oxford tongue ; when a man 
makes lunch his first meal of the day it becomes 
'' brunch;" and a tea-dinner at the Union Club 
is a " smug " at the " Ugger." ' 

''('Who was Agabus?' * Who was Candace?' 
' Who was Mother Lois ? ') 

" In at the flower-clad windows at mystic intervals 
these strange questions swept. No answer came, 
so far as we could hear ; but answers there were 
(or failures at answers), we knew. For in response 
to a guest's astonished question, 'Jubilee' and 
' Le Petty ' (Le Petit) explained together, ' Cram- 
ming for Gossers.' 

" So very clear ! Yet the ' stragger ' soon un- 
derstood that ' Gospels ' is a severe examination 
at Oxford, and, from window to window of the 
quad, friends ' cram ' each other with leading 
^ Gosser' questions. 

" ' A sort of amateur pupship,' ventures one of 
the straggers, whereupon the five explode. They 
explode again and again, as they dart about the 
spacious room seeking a hole or corner not already 
occupied with discarded dishes, till the guest fears 
somehow to have put her foot in it, yea, both 
feet. 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. II3 

" Yet she was right, after all ; for a man who 

* coaches ' for ' exams ' calls his pupils his 

* pups ' dropping the last syllable of ' pupils ; ' and 
many an Oxford man looks forward to no more 
brilliant career than a lifelong 'pupship.' 

" But what does it mean when Jubilee calmly 
asks Father William across the sweets : — 

" ' Keeper-Creeper to-day ? ' 

" ^ Don't you know ? ' he explains to the strag- 
gers. * One of the dons is always known as 
" Creeper " and to " keep a creeper " is to attend 
one of his lectures.' 

" Hark ! What bold thumping is this upon the 
antique stair? Are 'young barbarians ' again ' at 
play,' that shouts go with it, not all of laughter? 

" Our host goes out and returns. ' " Lily " and 
"Lulu" are helping "Samson" to the train,' he 
explains ; but nobody beheves him. Later the 
straggers know that two Merry Men, mad for 
mischief, had undertaken to '■ rag ' a room. 
Under pretence of helping the occupant to the 
train, they cast coal-scuttle, books, boots, etc., 
into an open trunk, and were trying to dump it 
down the stairs. When our host saw the comedy 
Lily and Lulu were tugging desperately train- 
ward at one end of the trunk, Samson contrary- 
wise at the other. All were hot and very red, 
and victory was undecided where to perch till a 
sudden thought struck Samson. Instandy he 
ceased to pull homeward, gave a sudden push 
trainward, and Lily and Lulu sprawled at the 
bottom of the stair, while Samson strode tri- 
umphant with his luggage to his room. 

" Then to the straggers the five tell stories. 
They tell of another unpopular student whose 



114 HIKED FURNISHED. 

room was ' ragged ' in similar manner, but gave 
different results. The rag^(?<f defended his lec- 
ture-notes, pyjamas, boots, and best hat, which the 
raggers were mixing indiscriminately, with tongs, 
poker, and zeal, so strenuously that his ' stove- 
pipe ' was not smashed, his lecture-notes not 
inextricably mixed ; but two Merry Men went 
about with black eyes for a few days thereafter 
bleating piteously, ' so deucedly ungentlemanly, 
doncherknow.' 

" Our company agreed with them ! 

" One evening some of the five saw a Youth in the 
quad who seemed hke one of the Arabian Nights, 
half flesh, half monumental marble. But in this 
case the magic was reversed ; for the upper half 
was black, being full evening dress, while the 
lower was a pair of silken tights. 

" A group of Merry Men were vigorously push- 
ing, or trying to push, something into the letter- 
box. 

*' ' He was going out to dine with a rip in his 
trousers; we will send them home to be mended,' 
they chorussed. The Monumental Youth was one 
of the most prankish of Merry Men himself, and 
took this revenge for many a joke of his own in 
perfectly good part. But the letter-box did not. 
It resisted bravely till it broke. Upon the bills 
(' battels ') of every man in college a shilling was 
charged for the letter-box wreckage, as it is the 
practice to charge such wrecks. The letter-box 
cost, perhaps, thirty shillings ; the assessment re- 
sulted in several pounds. The colleges never 
lose money by student antics ; the cost comes 
upon the students themselves, Merry Men and 
unmerry alike. 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. II5 

"Our host shows a huge bunch of cheap canes, 
perhaps two score of them. 

'' ' We buy them at wholesale, a penny each, 
and keep them on hand for presentations.' 

" Every Oxford man must carry a ^ stick/ as it is 
called. Without that distinctive mark a student 
is ' disgragger,' to the University. Sometimes a 
new man, never having been bothered with a cane, 
and caring all for study and naught for under- 
graduate tradition, neglects this tradition. Then 
men of his own college present him with penny 
canes, leave them in his room, at his door, his 
place in chapel, his seat at table, till the man in 
sheer self-defence is obliged to cane himself, 
though he lose one every hour. The ' straggers,' 
saw one day in the ' pagger,' a recluse ' grind,' 
who carried his stick tied to one of his buttons. 

" ' We presented him with twenty canes and 
sixteen umbrella handles before he gave in,' the 
straggers were told. 

" The lunch comes up from the ' Common Room,' 
and though the viands are dainty and rich, the 
menu is not extensive for many calls. Thus the 
first lunch of lobster salad (or salmon and cucum- 
ber), cold duck (or joint), lettuce salad and cherry 
pie, with fruit and bonbons, is quite epicurean. 
So is the second, in another man's room ; likewise 
the third, with the only change in host and guests. 
Then one begins to suspect a sameness. The suspi- 
cion grows, till after the fifth, one suspects no more. 

"One of our hosts has his room draped with 
Star-spangled banners, not as clean as they are in 
their own country. 

" ^ He sends his national standard to the wash 
with his shirts,' chuckled our English friends. 



I 1 6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" ' English dirt ! ' answered our host. 

^'' ' You would call washing your flag a " core," 
in America, would you not?' one asks, in all 
seriousness. 

"'Core?' 

" ' Yes, " core." We often find the word in 
American stories, c-h-o-r-e^ 

" ' No/ said the American, ' it is not a " core," 
and Washington pie is not "jam sandwich," though 
you English call it so.' 

" All laugh, for these discussions are frequent and 
always good-natured. One day in a meeting of a 
college club of which an American was a member 
the reader of the essay, forgetting the Yankee 
element, spoke of ' the sordid commercialism 
of the United States.' What was his astonish- 
ment to hear the company burst vigorously into a 
bar of Hail Columbia." 

" I remember," said Mr. Dove, " asking my 
scout one day if he thought we had enough for my 
luncheon-party, the supply seemed rather small." 

" ' Are there ladies of the party ? ' Savage asked. 

" ' Yes.' 

" ' Then quite enough, sir, quite enough. Gentle- 
men never eat so much when ladies are present.' " 

As if in echo to Hail Columbia, had come a 
postman's rap at the green door. 

" Only an island letter ; our steamer letters came 
hours ago," said the Doves, and they did not has- 
ten to see. " It is probably only an invitation." 

A little later Martin came with the evening milk. 
Said Mrs. Dove, " Please bring me the letter on 
the entry floor." 

" Why does she not bring it ? Why is she so 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. llj 

interminably long about it ? " after a long time 
asked Mrs. Dove. 

" Ask me another," said he. 

" Martin ! " 

" Madam ! " 

" The note ! " 

" Only an advertisement, Madam ; I took it 
down to the fire." 

" Queer thing for her to do ! Why not bring 
even an advertisement upstairs instead of down? 
Do you see, she has that strange, wild look again ; 
and just hear how she handles the kitchen poker 
and tongs ! '^ 

When, a day or two later, Martin had carried 
two other advertisements downstairs instead of up, 
she was formally requested to deliver everything 
found under the letter slit the moment it came. 

The very next time they succeeded in letting 
themselves in with their own key they found the 
little stair-landing, or entry, littered with bits of torn 
paper. 

" Dear, dear ! " mourned Mrs. Dove, " I am 
sure Martin is queer again to-day, or she would 
never do this, and so openly too. She has not 
even taken the trouble to burn the circular or 
circulars." 

" It seems to me we are objects of considerable 
interest to the dwellers in this little corner of St. 
Luke's parish," said Mrs. Dove one day. "Just 
see the heads in those cottage windows as we pass." 

" Probably it has got about that we are Amer- 
icans, and these heads are watching for our appear- 
ance in feathers and paint. Americans are rare 
in this quarter ; even if these people ever saw 



Il8 HIRED FURNISHED. 

any before us, they did not know them from 
English. But now they know what we are, they 
look to see something new and strange, like the 
Great American Sachem who drove four horses 
tandem through the streets of St. Helier's a year 
or two ago, and drew teeth without pain in Royal 
Square, and took the crutches of cripples away." 

They turned the corner as he spoke. As he 
spoke they saw a flying figure disappear up the 
hill. Within the instant they rang at their own 
door ; before he withdrew his hand from the bell 
a fury stood on the threshold. The woman's hair 
stood up ; her eyes blazed ; her face was crimson. 
She struck out blindly with a rolling-pin. 

" Take that, you sneak ! " 

The rolling-pin came down with a thump. It 
hit nobody but Martin herself, whose knees must 
have been black and blue for a week. Her face 
was not black and blue, but every color of the 
rainbow, when she recognized a pair of timid 
Doves in place of him for whom she had lain in 
wait. 

'^ It 's the butcher's son, sir, up by the Rouge 
Rue and his gang," she gasped, and the Doves 
could not but notice how soft and sweet her voice 
was through it all. " He 's been ringing the bell 
and hiding every day and stuffing paper through 
the letter slit. I shall go to the school-master of 
St. Luke's or to the rector about him. I pulled 
his hair for him yesterday, but he is too quick for 
me." 

" Devotion, not drink," said one of the Doves, 
remorsefully. " Think how she tried to keep 
from us that these young hoodlums were trying to 
surprise us in our American costume d'interieii?'.''^ 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. 1 19 

" What a pity we did not bring our lariats," 
said he. 

Probably Martin lives in memory none the less 
radiantly because of La Vieille. The contrast was 
stupendous. La Vieille might have lived for no 
other purpose than to make Martin regretted, and 
go to her grave the most successful woman who 
ever lived. 

The Doves could not have Martin the second 
year that they hired the dove-cote. Behold, some 
highly offensive officer — the Doves were sure he 
was red-faced, blustering, and read only picture- 
books — had incorporated Martin into his kitchen 
as head cook, entirely regardless of the rights of 
the American flag over the chimney-piece in Dove 
cottage. So Martin was lost to them, but they could 
have La Vieille, their landlady wrote, who would 
do everything for them, including the cooking, for 
the same terms. Mrs. Dove had seen La Vieille 
and was doubtful, but knew not what else to do. 

Behold La Vieille, who met them where Martin 
met the year before, but with what a difference ! 
She did not smile a welcome ; the Americans 
never saw her smile upon any occasion. She was 
of English parentage, about fifty, and could not 
speak the island French or any other, as she spoke 
English only by jerks and sputters as if afraid it 
might choke her. She had but one eye and but 
one tooth ; she was nearly stone deaf and would 
not be persuaded of the fact, which made confu- 
sion worse confounded by her pretence of under- 
standing. She invariably understood crossways 
and up-side-down, "because everybody nowadays 
mumbles ; " and she was given to weeping over the 
dinners because Mrs. Dove had insisted upon 



120 HIRED FURNISHED. 

seeing the pan washed before the roast went into 
the oven. Dirt lay thick under the sofa and chairs 
till Mrs. Dove took upon herself to sweep it all 
into the middle of the rooms over night. That 
La Vieille did not pass the heaps unobserved, as 
Mrs. Dove almost thought she would, was proved 
by the sound of loud weeping that filled Dove 
cottage early the next morning before the Doves 
were up. La Vieille could not read or write, and 
for a time she had an innocent little manner of 
bringing their letters to the Doves. She took 
them through the garden in at their landlady's 
back door to have the superscriptions read to her 
that she might know the master's letters from those 
of the missis, and vice versa. Complaint, re- 
proach, was useless ; she could scarcely hear a word, 
but at the spectacle of an offended face burst into 
violent weeping, and ever and forever the words, — 

" But I never have any followers." 

Followers ! That hideous, one-eyed, toothless 
spinster ! She was enough to frighten a whole 
garrison into decorous behavior, even though 
" followers " in a garrison town are the pest of 
almost every household, as they are the lifelong 
misfortune of many a serving-maid. One evening, 
the Doves heard an earnest confab in the street 
before their cottage. Two women talked together 
in the shadow of a wall ; one was crying bitterly. 
What was said the Americans did not hear until 
the woman who was not weeping burst furiously 
to the other : — 

"Them sojers oughter be drownded." 

"Followers," remarked the Doves. ''See what 
La Vieille is spared." 

" Followers ! " exclaimed their landlady. "They 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. 121 

are the pen^/ity we pay for conquering Hinglund. 
The hisland is overrun with red-coats, I could n't 
turn my back that my 'ouse wasn't full of 'em, 
heating my provisions and a-dancin' down my 
floors. I had to take La Vieille in self-defence, as 
the least of hevils." 

" Wherever we go," remarked Mrs. Dove, " we 
find bitter complaints of servants. Nowhere do 
we find them better than in our own country, where 
complaint is loudest. It seems to me every 
country has its own form of complaint. In our 
own free and equal country the insolence and in- 
dependence of the servants is almost their univer- 
sal fault. We think it an insupportable fault ; we 
do not stop to consider that French housekeepers 
suffer just as much from the immorality of their 
serving-inaids in youth, from drink and snuff in 
age ; that English housekeepers are continually at 
their wits' end for service because of dishonesty, 
drunkenness, and followers. To tell the truth, our 
American housekeepers ought to be thankful they 
are no worse served ; that drunkenness is almost 
unknown, thieving rare, immorality not one of our 
domestic crosses. Don't you remember the night 
we were to dine at Oakhurst, and two cooks were 
in the kitchen, the extra one in case the regular 
proved drunk and incapable t The dinner, such 
as it was, was tossed together by the butler's wife, 
brought in by telegram because both cooks were 
snoring under the kitchen table together. Then 
at our lodgings in Cavendish Square, when our 
landlady turned out three cooks in succession, and 
brought up our Sunday supper herself, having left 
the fourth cook weeping on the cellar stairs be- 
cause she was a ' poor orphanless child.' " 



122 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Because of La Vieille Mrs. Dove that second 
year saw much more of their landlady than the 
year before. Madame de Longue told many an 
interesting story of the island folk, one of which 
was not altogether new to the Americans, for it had 
made some stir in their own country. 

Several years ago, one Sunday evening two 
young shop-girls returning from church met two 
young men of their acquaintance. The young 
men proposed a moonlight row upon the water. 
They took two boats and rowed merrily away from 
the island. The boats became separated and one 
returned without the other. After some time the 
young man of the other boat came to land in an 
exhausted condition. He tried to explain that his 
boat was adrift with the young woman and without 
oars, but nobody believed him because he was 
French and a stranger. To be a stranger and 
French in the Channel Islands makes a man at 
once distrusted, even though almost any Jerseyman 
pressed to the point will acknowledge that the 
reason is not so much the French character as 
Jerseymen's inveterate dislike of Frenchmen. The 
young man said that he lost an oar overboard ; in 
trying to recover it he accidentally went over him- 
self; he knew nothing better to do, he said, than to 
swim ashore for assistance. Boats went out in 
search of the young woman, but after long search 
came back without tidings. The young man was 
arrested charged with the murder of the girl, and lay 
in prison for two months awaiting trial. The girl's 
family went into mourning, which, as they were in 
poor circumstances, was handsomely furnished by a 
town torn with sorrow and wrath for the murder of a 
Jersey girl by a pestiferous Frenchman. Then came 



MARTIN AND LA VIEILLE. 1 23 

a Bank holiday when all the island was free to go 
where it pleased. A great part of them chose to go 
to a certain hotel on a certain bay some miles from 
St. Helier's to view the body of the unfortunate girl 
washed ashore by the tides. Everything in the 
shape of a carriage, car, or wagon was pressed into 
service, hundreds went on foot ; the concourse at 
the hotel was amazing, the proprietor reaped a 
tremendous harvest, and not till everybody had 
gone home without seeing any murdered body 
washed ashore did it dawn upon public compre- 
hension that the proprietor of the hotel had played 
a very clever advertising trick by means of the 
sensation rocking the island. A week or two 
afterwards the community was electrified by a 
message from under the sea. It was a telegram 
from a clergyman in Newfoundland stating that the 
young woman was safe in his family. The island 
went almost wild with joy that an obscure shop- 
girl, of whom almost nobody had ever heard before 
that fateful Sunday night, was not murdered, but 
safe in a foreign land three thousand miles from 
home. Telegrams flew thick and fast under the 
Atlantic at government expense. The island thus 
learned that the girl in the boat, after the French- 
man's cowardly desertion of her to save himself, 
had drifted out to sea for twenty-four hours. 
Even while Jersey boats searched for her she 
despairingly watched the London packets steam 
from Jersey. She waved her hat and screamed 
with as much effect as a gnat in a cyclone. Still 
she drifted away, away, till, sick at heart and in 
body, she lapsed into a swoon or stupor. When she 
awoke a saihng-vessel was not far away, and she 
succeeded in attracting attention. She was taken 



124 HIRED FURNISHED. 

on board, treated with every kindness and respect 
by the captain, a Frenchman from St. Malo bound 
to Newfoundland. Although only fifteen miles 
from Jersey he could not alter his course, which 
would mean thirty miles for his slow craft He 
gave up his cabin to her, clothed her in dry clothes 
that were not womanly, and at St. John's delivered 
her to the clergyman's family. The affair became 
a public one, for the Jersey legislature, always 
paternal of government, assumed every expense of 
the Jersey girl's home-bringing. She was clothed 
handsomely and sent first class to England, where 
her family was sent to meet her. The day she 
returned to Jersey, three months after drifting 
away in the dark, was a public hohday. Shops 
were decorated, flags flying, the streets were filled 
with an eager populace loaded with flowers. As 
she stepped ashore from the great steamer, hand- 
somely dressed, having gone so shabby away, she 
stepped into banks of flowers and loud hurrahs. 
" Hef she 'd been the duchess of Normandie her- 
self she could n't 'a' had a sweller home-comin'," 
said Mrs. Dove's landlady. The honest captain of 
the schooner, even though a Frenchman, received 
his share of the island's enthusiastic gratitude. A 
handsome purse was presented to him, and a 
memorial piece of silver ; he was publicly invited 
to visit the island as its guest, but modestly dechned 
so heavy an honor. 

•'Then what became of the heroine?" asked 
Mrs. Dove. 

'^ She went to France to visit the captain's wife 
and family, then came home and went into the 
shop again. A while afterwards she was married. 
I don't know if she is living on the island now or 
where." 



MARTIN AND LA VIE ILL E. 1 25 

Said Mrs. Dove that night at dinner, " After 
dinner I want you to set me adrift in a boat." 
Then, after a pause, "But no ; islands, like repub- 
lics, are ungrateful ; they allow their hobjecs of hin- 
terest to sink so far out of interest that nobody 
knows whether they are on the island or off." 

Nevertheless, this same paternal care of the 
island government for the islanders that made an 
island-affair of the island girl is shown everywhere. 
The debates of the Etats do not scorn to discuss 
all the pros and cons of a woman's domestic cir- 
cumstances when considering whether to give her 
a hotel license or not. The Doves heard one such 
deliberation, where it was decided to give such a 
license to a girl who, although very young for 
such a position, had an elderly aunt living with 
her ! 



126 HIRED FURNISHED. 



''UNCLE PETER." 

The Americans had always cherished a quiet 
fondness for an unknown relative of a distin- 
guished American man of letters. That unknown 
grand-uncle was the last link that connected the 
American family, now entirely extinct, with the 
curiously remote island of its paternal origin. 
Curiously remote, one says, for the reason that the 
Americanized branch of the family became, not 
only more thoroughly New Englanders and Yan- 
kees than very many descendants of Pilgrims and 
Puritans, but because they were always absolutely 
without longings for the Old Home, the country 
of our nativity, the beautiful England and its 
dependencies that is New England's mother. 

Henry Thoreau was entirely satisfied with his 
own little corner of life ; he never expressed the 
slightest desire to go to Europe ; no thread of 
pre-natal love and memory stretched though ever 
so imperceptibly between him and Jersey whence 
his father's Uncle Peter now and then sent greet- 
ings. Curiously remote the Island of Jersey must 
indeed have seemed to the American Thoreaus 
because remote from their sympathy and interest. 
It were as though the insular habit of their ances- 
tors lived in them still, even on a continent. 

In 1772 a young John Thoreau sailed away 
from St. Helier's forever. Jersey was his native 



''UNCLE peter:' 127 

island ; it was very vivid and positive to his con- 
sciousness that final day ; he knew every street 
and alley of St. Helier's ; probably not a corner 
of the island, not a bay or promontory of its 
coast but was as definite as an actual picture in 
his imagination. Little could he have believed 
then that he would in time almost cease to think 
of himself as a Jerseyman at all, that he would 
forget to speak of his native island even to his 
sons and daughters of another nationality than 
his own. 

None of the Jerseyman 's descendants ever 
knew why or how he thus sailed away. In Jersey 
it is supposed that he made one of a crew of 
some Jersey privateer, of which there were many 
at that time, and that he got to the colonies 
without intending to get there and in some way 
unexpected to himself. His family knew nothing 
save that he was shipwrecked and suffered great 
hardships. 

This boy of nineteen evidently spoke Enghsh. 
It is probable that he and his brother Peter were 
the only ones of the family who wrote it easily ; 
for the latter is the only one who ever wrote 
to the American Thoreaus, and with his death 
all communication between the families ceased. 
These two, Peter the younger brother, left to con- 
tinue the father's wine trade in St. Helier's, the 
next older first keeping a store in Boston, then 
living for years on Concord Green, maintained 
an intermittent correspondence till John died in 
1 801. Even then faithful Uncle Peter did not 
lose sight of his American nephews and nieces, 
but from time to time sent them an epitome of 
the family history upon his side of the Atlantic, 



128 HIRED FURNISHED. 

telling them, in 1801, of their grandmother's 
death, only a few weeks after the death of her 
American son. In every affectionate letter he 
wrote also of their cousins, his own children 
Peter and Betsey. It had taken so long by 
slow- sailing ship for tidings of the death on 
Concord Green to reach Jersey that Alarie 
Thoreau, aged seventy-nine, had passed away, 
having been but a year a widow, without know- 
ing that her son John, unseen for thirty years, 
had passed on before her. 

In writing his simple, affectionate letters to his 
distant kindred Uncle Peter little dreamed that 
he wrote for unborn generations, little dreamed 
that his ardess chronicles would be printed as a 
portion of the history of a New England Worthy. 
He little dreamed that many a year after he was 
dust two pilgrims from New England would search 
long for his forgotten grave that they might leave 
there a garland of remembrance, and pansies for 
gentle thoughts. He httle dreamed that pilgrims 
from his brother's far country would seek for his 
descendants with far and wide questionings, by 
graveyard hauntings and the searchings of church 
registers, finding at last Uncle Peter's grand- 
daughter in none of these, but young, smihng, 
happy in her own Jersey home, and immensely 
surprised to be an object of pilgrim quest. 

It was Mrs. Dove who came home almost 
breathless one day, saying, " I have found them ! " 

Her mate did not need to ask who, and 
merely said, "Where?" 

" Not ten minutes walk from here ; she 's been 
there all this time that we 've been ransacking not 
only Green Street Cemetery and Grouville church- 



''UNCLE PETER." 1 29 

yard, but the memories of everybody we knew, as 
well as many we don't know. The librarian, who 
does n't believe in my accent, introduced her hus- 
band ; he 's of an historic island family. Don't you 
remember we read of a fighting parson, Rev. 
Du Parq, grandson of a protestant refugee from 
France, and himself a retired mihtary chaplain, who 
took command of the artillery at St. Ouen's and 
sent his bullets into the invading Prince of Nassau 
in 1779? Her husband is one of those Du Parqs, 
and he — she — they — we — he — I — " 

'' Do stop for breath to tell me who she 
may be." 

'' Uncle Peter's granddaughter, of course, his 
very onty-donty-own, and she was born Sophia 
Thoreau, cousin twice removed of Henry Thoreau 
of Concord ; but I care less for the cousinship 
than I do for the granddaughtership, for she 's 
Uncle Peter's, and his only descendant on the 
island except her own son, and he says she will 
come to see me — " 

" Who says so ? Uncle Peter's granddaughter's 
son?" 

" No, Uncle Peter's granddaughter's husband, 
descendant of the fighting parson and father of 
Uncle Peter's great-grandson, who ought to be 
proud of his ancestry." 

In Uncle Peter's letters to his niece Ehzabeth 
Thoreau, published in all biographies of her 
nephew Henry Thoreau, he speaks of his son 
Peter, then a lad. The children of this lad are 
now only two. Of the two, one lives in Eng- 
land ; the only one left upon the island is the 
eldest. The name Thoreau no longer exists 
in Jersey, where once it was so numerous and 



I30 HIRED FURNISHED. 

SO honorable, save upon many gravestones. Uncle 
Peter's youngest Jersey descendant is thus not 
a Thoreau, — a clever lad of sixteen, familial 
with many American books, curious about Amer- 
ica and thoroughly acquainted with his cousin 
Thoreau's fame and writings. 

The Doves found Uncle Peter's granddaughter 
in such an ugly-visaged house that it were easy 
to pity her. The street was ugly, dusty, close ; 
the front door seemed grimly shut without any 
intention of opening with a welcome. It was 
not so blunt upon the street as the dove-cote, 
but might just as well have been for any supe- 
riority in the becomingness of amiability. 

" In Jersey it is about as silly a thing as one 
can do to form an opinion of a house from the 
street side," whispered a Dove as they waited 
in her sitting-room the coming of Uncle Peter's 
granddaughter. 

For, behold, the marvel was wrought anew that 
had so amazed the hirers of Dove Cottage, and 
the house was twice as large as it looked, as 
toward a smiling sea it turned a smiling face. 
Between the smiling side of the house and the 
island's calm edge was a sunny garden, blooming, 
fragrant, drowsy with the hum of bees, jocund 
with the songs of birds. 

" Jerseymen have become Anglicized at least 
thus much," said a Dove. " They know how to 
keep the best for themselves." 

Enters Uncle Peter's granddaughter, and grand- 
niece of the ex-privateersman on Concord Green. 
But how so young, this daughter of the lad Peter 
of whom Uncle Peter wrote to America in 1801 
as already well-grown? Why so fair, so bright, 



''UNCLE PETER'' 13 I 

whose father to-day would have been more than 
a century old?" 

The granddaughter laughs. 

"You see," she says, "my father, 'the lad 
Peter ' as you call him, was married three times, 
the last time at sixty-four with a girl of nineteen. 
By none of the marriages save the last had he 
any children. My mother's father and mother 
were considerably younger than my father. I 
can remember hearing my grandmother tell of 
my birth and the white-haired old man flying 
down the hill to announce the birth of a new 
Thoreau. I wonder if he was not less dehghted 
later," laughed the low soft voice, " when another 
was born, and then twins. For we were a lively 
family and annoyed him with our pranks. The 
white-haired old man never seemed to us as our 
young mother seemed, — he wanted quiet and 
peace ; we would not let him have it ; being in 
the majority we had our own way. Although 
my father was forty-six years older than my 
mother he out-lived her three or four years, 
dying in 1867, at seventy-eight years of age. 
I wish I had asked him all about my grandfather, 
the Uncle Peter of my American cousins, but I 
never did. I have heard him speak of a sister, 
my aunt Betsey, but I never knew that I had 
American cousins till we learned it by the Henry 
Thoreau biographies." 

The granddaughter has a soft and exquisitely 
modulated voice. Mrs. Dove ventured to ask if 
that voice was an island voice, a Thoreau voice, 
or essentially an individual one. Unsuspecting 
why the question or the effort to trace a musical 
genealogy, the wind-sweet voice answered : — 



132 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" It must be a Thoreau voice, for my sister's and 
mine are frequently mistaken one for the other." 

^' Don't you remember," a Dove was telegraph- 
ing to another Dove, with every possible eloquence 
of wink and blink as the granddaughter busied 
herself with the teacups, "don't you remember 
somebody told us that half the charm of Henry 
Thoreau's poems was the wind-sweet voice in 
which he read them?" 

With calm eyes the other telegraphed back : — • 

" Of course ! did he not flute to the owls and 
tree-toads of Walden Pond, seeking unconsciously 
to And again the long-forgotten music of the wind- 
swept, sea-cradled island home of his race?" 

With the tea came the granddaughter's son, 
learning now at Victoria college as a foreign lan- 
guage the French that (in its island form) was the 
mother tongue of his mother's great-grandparents 
Philippe Thoreau and Marie Le Gallais, just as 
Henry Thoreau in Harvard College studied as a 
foreign tongue the language of his great-grand- 
parents Philippe and Marie Le Gallais Thoreau. 

" Whenever I see Americans," he says, " I ask 
them about Henry Thoreau." Then he added, 
quizzically, " They generally answer, ' Henry Tho- 
reau? who was he? ' " 

It is a far cry from great-grandparents to great- 
grandchildren, yet to these Americans Uncle Peter's 
granddaughter and Henry Thoreau seemed very 
near akin, just because Philippe and Marie Le 
Gallais Thoreau, a respectably undistinguished 
couple who hved, loved, worked, and died so long 
ago, bore the same ancestral relation to both. 

Unlike most youths of sixteen, Uncle Peter's 
great-grandson has interest in his ancestors on both 



''UNCLE PETER." 133 

sides. He regards them, however, synthetically, 
as those Shades are so often regarded, and distin- 
guishes sinner from saint, dreamer from warrior, 
firebrand from man of peace, only as " one of 
them." " One of them " defied the all-powerful 
De Carterets and gained his suit at law which 
proved him stuff not to be trodden on. "One of 
them " cast bullets for Jersey's enemies in the 
church cellar. " One of them " did this, " one of 
them " did that. For to this we all come when 
our throbbing flesh falls away, our burning hearts 
are ashes, and in the world of the disembodied we 
leave the earth of our little raptures and agonies 
to our children's children's children ; we are no 
more than an ancestral '^ one of them." 

" Don't worry," said the young Dove, whose 
mission it always seemed to smooth the asperities 
of the elder's fate. '' Don't worry. Do we ever 
distinguish our great-grandchildren-to-be save as 
^one of them '?" 

Uncle Peter was born November, 1755, when 
George the Second was King of England and a 
sorry representative to Jersey of the proud dukes 
of Normandy ; he died in 1810. It is proof of his 
faithful family affection that, although he was but 
seventeen when his brother John sailed away for- 
ever into the west, at fifty he was still writing to 
that brother's children, and sending them a picture 
of the ancient town in which their father was born. 
It is evident that the desire to maintain these 
relations was chiefly on his side, for he complained 
that his letters remained unanswered. Young peo- 
ple are always more indifferent to such ties than 
their elders ; none of the American Thoreaus 
realized the value, in more ways than one, of their 



134 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Uncle Peter's friendliness. John and Peter Thoreau 
were of the nine children of Monsieur Philippe 
Thoreau and Marie Le Gallais, who were married 
in T 749. Only three of these were sons, but quite 
sons enough to perpetuate the name, one would 
think, knowing the perpetuating power of so many 
original " three brothers " in America. Philippe, 
the eldest son remained on the island, and his line 
lingered there till the last son of Maitre Thoreau 
of Grouville emigrated to New Zealand years ago. 
They were a family speaking always the island 
language and keeping up the habit of French 
Christian names, while the John branch and the 
Peter bore English forms of often the same names. 
The second son of Philippe and Marie became 
an American, the third became Uncle Peter, and 
remained a Jerseyman till he died. He kept up 
the island habit of naming the first son for the 
father, the first daughter for the mother. For this 
reason Jersey genealogies are easy to trace, even 
if only on tombstones. In America, Jerseyman 
John Thoreau did the same, and there were three 
Johns till the last died a bachelor, one of a family 
of spinsters and bachelors. The eldest daughter of 
John Thoreau was Jane for her mother, her sister 
was Marie, or Maria, the name of her Jersey 
grandmother. Another sister was Sophia Thoreau, 
as was born Sophia Thoreau, the sweet-voiced 
lady who smiles over cups of exquisite tea at the 
Thoreau enthusiasm of these American Doves. 

When, in 1801, Uncle Peter wrote to his Amer- 
ican relations of his son Peter, their cousin, the 
lad was about eleven years old, running about St. 
Helier's in long worsted stockings and knee 
breeches, and doubdess with ambition for a bob- 



''UNCLE PETER." 135 

bing queue as long as his father's. He grew up to 
the family wine trade and during many years had 
charge of a branch house in London. In 1855 
he made his third marriage, with a Jersey girl 
of nineteen, the very year, perchance even the 
very day that across the sea Henry Thoreau re- 
corded in his Journal having received for safe 
keeping from his Aunt Maria the family heirlooms 
of Uncle Peter's letters. Maria Thoreau and the 
bridegroom of sixty-four were own cousins, yet 
we hear of no wedding announcement such as 
Uncle Peter would have been sure to send ; and 
although these letters were for '' safe keeping," 
they did not prompt to any renewal of Thoreau 
ties. The American Thoreaus were insular, even 
with their continental admixture of blood and their 
continental birth. 

The granddaughter showed the Doves portraits 
of her father the lad Peter, a quaint little old 
gentleman, swallow-tailed and brass-buttoned and 
seeming long generations away from his daughter 
Sophia. *' One of them " he seemed and scarcely 
more ; very much more and merely " one of them," 
than eighteenth-century Philippe or Marie seemed. 

" Moral," telegraphed a Dove, " unless you 
want to be merely ' one of them ' to your own 
children, don't marry at sixty-four." 

" We won't ! " telegraphed chorus. 

The Americans sought long for the graves of 
Philippe and Marie Thoreau and faithful Uncle 
Peter their son. Beside the latter, one at least 
of the Americans wished to kneel in the soft grass 
amid the geolian music of sunny Jersey, and thank 
his shade for the faithful kindness of his life. 
They never found those graves, though many a 



13^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

Stately stone bears the name of Thoreau, even of 
Philippes, Maries, and Peters. Uncle Peter was 
buried near his father and mother in the parish 
churchyard of St. Helier's. Thirty or forty years 
ago it was found necessary to widen the road out- 
side the churchyard, and thus to encroach upon a 
space of graves in which slept many Thoreaus. 
The ashes of Philippe and Marie with several of 
their children, including Peter, were carefully re- 
moved, but as the inscriptions upon their tomb- 
stones had perished, it is now unknown where 
their bones were laid. 

Opposite the churchyard still stands the de- 
crepit house from which Philippe and Marie 
Thoreau were buried in 1800 and 1801, in which 
Philippe, John, and Peter, with their sisters, Mary, 
Ann, Elizabeth, Jeanne, Susan, and Catherine 
Thoreau were born. From that house John Tho- 
reau departed, having but a few steps to go to 
reach the water over which he would never come 
back again, in 1773, when George the Third was 
King of Jersey and eke of Concord Green. It 
is a prison-like square house, of some pretensions 
in its day but now a ghost of its former self. It 
went with the Philippe branch of Thoreaus, and 
some years ago was sold out of the family by the 
last male of the island line, the one last heard 
of in New Zealand where he is said to have a large 
family. The old house is in process of restora- 
tion for purposes entirely unconnected with the 
wine trade, and is regardless of ghosts, even 
Uncle Peter's. 

"The PhiHppe Thoreaus?" said the grand- 
daughter ; " yes, I dimly remember being taken 
out there to tea as a child. I should have known 



''UNCLE PETERr 13/ 

more about them had my father not died while 
we were still so young." 

" Don't you know," almost gasped one of the 
ancestor-worshipping Doves, " don't you know 
that Maitre Thoreau was great-grandson of your 
great-great-grandparents? Don't you know that 
he was always an old-school Jersey man and never 
spoke English when he could avoid it? Don't 
you know that he was a gentleman farmer at 
Grouville and church-warden, till he shocked 
everybody by becoming converted and joining 
the dissenters ; that he married two wives and 
took a fatal cold while collecting the census?" 

Uncle Peter's descendant's answer was rippling 
music. 

" Only you Americans find out so much more 
about us than we know," said the granddaughter. 



138 HIRED FURNISHED. 



GARRISON SERVICE. 

The regiment in garrison at Fort Regent is a 
Yorkshire one, mostly north-of-England men, with 
the north-of-England btirr^ so different from the 
London and south-of-England accents. Words- 
worth was a north-of-England man, and he made 
no bones of rhyming " girl " with '•'■ squirrel," thus 
leaving proof to generations after him that he 
pronounced " girl " guirrel, or " squirrel " squirl. 

This garrison service is open to all who choose 
to attend it. Many do so choose because of the 
music ; it comes immediately after a service en- 
tirely in French. Those upon the island who do 
not speak both languages are very few, and every 
church of the twelve parishes has at least one 
French service every Sunday. 

In some of the back parishes the knowledge 
of English is almost scanty, and the Doves 
noticed that some of the rectors used a form of 
English, considerably corrupted by French. As 
one of the rectors once said, " We speak both 
languages badly, but we prefer to abuse the 
French." 

All of these rectors are Jerseymen by birth ; no 
other can hold a benefice on the island. They 
are English university men ; some even have had 
English parishes. Yet so delicate a thing is lan- 
guage, so subtle its tempters, and so hidden its 



GARRISON SERVICE. 139 

pitfalls, that even these educated men by no 
means keep theirs pure and undefiled. In the 
lower classes it is much worse, and some speak 
a motley French patched with much Enghsh, 
some ragged English patched with French. Jer- 
sey-French even of the upper classes, everybody 
knows not to be French- French. For even though 
the words are perfect French, the idioms are not, 
and the construction of sentences continually sug- 
gests English. 

The Parish Church of St. Helier's was built a 
century before we were even " discovered." In 
1 341 it stood here just where a church has stood 
ever since. In the old times it was a Norman 
church, and continued under the ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction of a French Bishop long after the civil 
authority of the island was English. 

Now the Channel Islands are a part of the 
diocese of Winchester. The late Bishop was sus- 
pected of resenting that fact, and the necessity 
of crossing the dreadful channel occasionally to 
look after this part of his flock. He appeared to 
consider his Channel Island lambs something 
neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and greeted every child 
with, " Parley voo Fransy .? " — a question to take 
the child's breath away j as if a Boston boy were 
asked, "Can you speak Enghsh?" This good 
Bishop always scolded very much because the 
churches were not warm enough for him, always 
ate good dinners, and, at least, once upon a time 
asked that he might be allowed to sup before 
meeting the invited guests. Immediately after 
supping, the good Shepherd of Souls and Vicar 
of Christ felt quite unable to meet the invited 
company and retired to bed. 



I40 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Before the Reformation, 1565, this church and 
others possessed the right of Sanctuary. Directly 
from the gate by which we enter the churchyard, 
a road twenty-four feet wide led straight to the 
sea and by it the offender must either leave the 
island or give himself up to the legal authorities. 
The church did not thus give immunity to crime, 
but protection against the oppressions of feudal 
lords. The descendants of both feudal lords and 
oppressed, still bearing ancestral names, now sit 
side by side in the church. 

The present church has a low Norman tower, 
and the roof is upheld by Norman pillars ; other- 
wise it has no air of antiquity. 

From the gallery the Doves looked down upon 
what at first sight seems a sohd red carpet. These 
are red-coats, still the same as when a hundred 
years ago the term '' red-coat," expressed un- 
speakable hatred to a people across the sea. We 
notice how unbecoming the red is to those sandy- 
haired high colored Englishmen, many of them 
mere boys with still the rustic bloom upon them of 
Yorkshire farms and hamlets. In blue or gray 
they would look another race of men, refined 
simply by a change of dye. Now they have a hot 
and angry appearance, and one regarding them 
(who chances not to be English), is reminded 
more of steaming lobsters than of iron sons of 
Mars. They seem somewhat restless, and have 
the usual British soldier air of being exceedingly 
well groomed and oiled. At the listlessness we 
do not wonder when the stately rector sits him 
down. 

Beside the altar, the regimental band takes the 
organ's part. The bandmen are lavishly decorated 



GARRISON SERVICE. I4I 

with white braid, on red coats, and have fringed 
shoulder caps precisely Hke women's. To eyes 
not English, especially eyes remembering the 
simple dignity of American uniforms, as well as 
the Italian which is somewhat like it, these red 
and white popinjays tempt to a shooting out of 
the lips. Certain Americans that day regarded 
them from seats of the scornful. Any proposition 
to change the dress of the English soldier, so 
associated with England's glory, would rock the 
British empire to its foundations no doubt. But 
could there possibly be a martial thrill the less for 
a few thousand leagues the less of this white- 
popinjay trimming ? 

The responses are feeble. The prayer for the 
Queen receives fewer than that for the Princess 
of Wales, whose gentleness and heart-break over 
her poor weakling son have ever since drawn her 
to the hearts of the islanders. A volume of 
sound was expected from this churchful of throaty 
Englishmen, but Tommy Atkins comes to church 
only because he is led lamblike to the slaughter 
of his preferences. Much rather would he roam 
the streets of St. Heher's with a silly round cap 
over one red ear, the ideal of dashing and heroic 
beauty to nurses and parlor maids. 

The sermon, — was it one ? It certainly was 
delivered in a preachy tone, by the dark, Frenchy- 
looking young curate with a French name, who, 
by the way, repeatedly used as in the place of so 
and that in precisely the manner so reprobated 
in Americans by James Russell Lowell. The Thing 
had a text (or at least one was given out), and it 
had " firstly," '' secondly," " thirdly," and " finally." 
But it had no head, so far as the finite under- 



142 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Standing could see, no middle, and no end, though 
it came to a close in due course. Well may poor 
Tommy Atkins seem listless. To sit within sound of 
this and its like fifty times a year is enough to re- 
duce any man to gibbering idiocy who really listens. 
It is a written Thing, and it treated of pain, toil, 
humility, patience. It viewed all these, not from 
the spiritual side, or rather did not view them at 
all, but boyishly mouthed the views of the aristo- 
cratic and conventional Established Church. 

Pain, toil, humility, patience, are the duty of 
Tommy Atkins, and he must not forget that he 
and his low-born hordes are put here to toil and 
suffer for the high reward of achieving humility 
and patience. Christ was a dumb carpenter for 
thirty years, but he was Christ all the same, and 
would have been even had his tongue never been 
loosened. 

The natty little curate gave Tommy a thor- 
oughly Class-Thing. A bicyclist speeding through 
the church could have seen that, and that the car- 
penter ideal — not the divine, not celestial thought 
and heaven-aspiring endeavor — was for red-coats, 
but pain, toil, humility, patience. " God hath him- 
self appointed that many shall work for a living, 
as Christ himself set an example," saith the 
Preacher, while in seats of the scornful certain 
Americans scoffed that it be deemed ChristHke, 
that it even be "working for a living" to take 
the Queen's shilling, to be garbed hke a boiled 
lobster, and to loll uselessly about the streets of 
Peace, or else go forth to kill and be killed. 

When they came out of church the red-coats 
were forming into rank in the square, whence they 
strode fortwards to notes of fife and drum. 



GARRISON SERVICE. 1 43 

Even before those notes died away others were 
heard. Those notes were not music, but they 
made a vigorous and stirring noise. Soul and 
body went to blowing and pounding; zeal and 
strength of purpose were behind them. Worn-out 
thoughts, dead conventions never made so much 
clamor, and the Doves wondered if after all poor 
lowly Tommy Atkins might not be better reached 
by loud and lowly Salvationists than by High- 
Churchism, condescending from Heaven only 
knows how many classes above him. 

Another time, another curate. What could 
poor Tommy think, if he thought at all, of two 
such antipodean views of his duty? 

This curate's name is thoroughly English. He 
is not a man to resign his curacy in a miff were 
young ladies of the parish to sing Gilbert and 
Sullivan curate songs at him with deep expression. 
Rather would he sing back at them. 

Evidently the Reverend Mr. Stott intends to 
meet Tommy on Tommy's own level. Hence his 
Tommyatkinsesque style of language. He intends 
to be practical and hopes no " blagguds " are 
among the men and also hopes they tell no 
" tarradiddles." " The man is a duffer who don't 
try to get at the top," although only a Sunday or 
two ago he must stay where God placed him, 
remembering that his toil and humility are God's 
will. " Sin is no fluke," the Jersey man with an 
English name tells them, and they must '' stuff 
themselves with truth as we stuff our shoes with 
shapes, — not stufT ourselves as the anaconda does, 
who stuffs and sleeps." 

The whole burden was, Get up, get on ; have 
your nets out for draughts of fishes ; if you are 



144 HIRED FURNISHED. 

a stupid Tommy Atkins, make up your mind that 
you must work a heap harder than your friend 
Tommy who is less of a dunce, etc., etc. 

Is such a difference in views the difference be- 
tween a Jerseyman with a French face and name 
and a Jerseyman with an English name and face ? 
the Doves wondered. 

The responses were all led by the band, which 
band also punctuated the prayers by blowing 
saliva from out its trumpets. The services ended 
by Saving the Queen, who is Duchess of 
Normandy. 



IN THE J ERSE V " STA TES." 1 45 



IN THE JERSEY "STATES." 

Daylight comes dimly through windows of 
stained glass ; a single torch burns from the roof. 
Under an oaken canopy are two sculptured thrones, 
one of lesser height and evidently of smaller dig- 
nity than the other. Before the two thrones stands 
the royal mace, presented to this august company, 
or rather to an ancestral company, by Charles II., 
of England. The floor of the handsome chamber 
is well filled with about fifty men. None of them 
are quite young men ; gray heads and bald pre- 
dominate, as they always do among the Solons of 
nations, little and great. From the gallery one 
hears an unfamiliar roll-call. Not only strange 
names, but stranger titles. " Jurat de Quette- 
ville," " Connetable de St. Helier's,'' has no English 
sound ; neither has the breathless gabble with 
which the nervously brisk greffier recites the con- 
ventional form of excuse for absentees. It is 
not English, and keenly interested working-men 
discuss the proceedings in whispers that are not 
English. 

Were yon roof vaulted, instead of cumbrously 
flat and heavy with renaissance ornament, were 
that burning torch not palpably gas, we might 
almost persuade ourselves that this is a Norman 

10 



I4<5 HIRED FURNISHED. 

council hall, and we looking down upon lieges 
doing homage to a feudal lord. 

Yet no ! For even while we listen and while 
amid the names of many connetahles, we half wait 
for that of the Breton Dugueschn, Connetable of 
France, we catch a sound of later days and of 
a later spirit in the roll-call for " Depute de ceci^^ 
" Depute de celaP What have feudal days and bar- 
onial halls to do with deputies, or deputies with 
them ? 

In reality the scene is a seance of the Jersey 
" Etats,'^ or " States ; " and these fifty men are 
the august legislators of the little island nation 
in the English Channel, which has '^ Home Rule " 
in the largest sense, with no representation at 
Westminster, and preserves to this day strong traces 
in laws and lawmaking of its Norman origin. 

''Jerseymen first, Englishmen afterward," these 
Channel Islanders invariably declare themselves. 
Yet they are English in daily speech and habit, 
thoroughly English in loyalty, and with even 
more than the Englishman's inveterate and ineradi- 
cable feeling of superiority to all Frenchmen. 

The Jersey " Etats,'' or " States," are repre- 
sented by twelve jurats (from jurat., jurez, comes 
our "jury "), one for each of the twelve parishes 
of the island, and chosen for life ; the connetable, 
or mayor, of each parish, a deputy for each and 
three for the capital, St. Helier's, and the twelve 
rectors. 

Deputies and con7ietables are elected for three 
years, rectors sit as long as they hold their bene- 
fices. Two Crown officers, attorney-general and 
solicitor-general, are also in their seats, where 
they may speak but may not vote ; the president, 



IN THE JERSEY "STATES." 1 47 

or /?ai/h\ occupies the higher of the two thrones, 
the lower empty in the absence of the governor. 
This latter officer has no vote, yet has the right of 
veto. Both governor and the bailli, Sir George 
Bertram, hold office from the Crown. 

The governor's is an English office ; the bailli, 
or bailiff, is the ancient title and office descended 
from Norman time. He still swears, on taking 
office : " Faire droit aii peuple, baillaiit et deli- 
vrant a chaciin bonne et brieve justice, au petit comme 
ail grand, an riche comme au pauvre, sans exception 
de per Sonne, ^'' etc. 

The bailli is also chief judge in the Royal Court. 
The viscount, or sheriff, has a seat but no vote, 
neither can he speak without special permission. 
All matters discussed in the " States " are only 
^^ projets de loi " till they receive the royal assent, 
although as provisional enactments they are valid 
for three years. The " States " have no real con- 
stitution ; only an antiquated tangle of inherited 
laws, traditional precedents, and modern amend- 
ments. Yet so attached to " things as they always 
have been " are the Jersiais that the brilliant 
Attorney-General has lately brouglit no end of 
hornets about his ears by simply stating the truth, 
that the island has not, and never has had, what 
it needs, a constitution. Reforms move slowly, 
like the solemn stars, on this soft, sunny isle ; and 
only within three years have the more hasting and 
less resting of the workers secured the secret 
ballot. 

Upon the left of the throne sit the jurats, as a 
body the baldest, grayest, most draught-avoiding 
and becapped of the Assembly. On the right are 
the rectors, younger, and headed by the Dean of Jer- 



148 HIRED FURNISHED. 

sey, who, however, sits here only as the Rector of 
St. HeUer's. The rectors are English in appear- 
ance, though all are " Jerseymen first." The Estab- 
lished Church puts its stamp upon its priests quite 
as much as does Rome. They are all university 
men ; some have had English parishes, many have 
English wives. They are really the most English 
section of the "States," although their English 
speech sometimes is decidedly jersiais. 

Among jurats, conne tables, deputes, are some 
faces as un-English as if the island had never been 
riven from France. Yonder sits a seigneur and 
jurat busy with penknife and finger-tips. He 
wears a gray business suit and sits quite in Amer- 
ican fashion. Even thus he might be a mailed 
knight of eight centuries ago, jousting and tilting 
with those who became his ancestors, for his very 
face and figure we have seen upon scores of Nor- 
man tombs. 

Among the deputies asleep on the back seats 
are several that one almost remembers to have 
bargained with in the markets of Normandy, and 
a co?inetahle or two in conspicuously English 
clothes (or capital imitations) are brothers of ex- 
cursionists over from France for the day. 

What more interesting to us Americans than the 
bill presented now by the Rector of Grouville, and 
which he presents, he says, ^^ en tj-emhlant^^ though 
we see no sign of it. This rector is known as the 
" States' Jester," and wears his cap and bells with 
many a witty and sarcastic fling. 

The seance is dignified, yet not formal, and 
order is fully maintained by the five fingers of the 
baiUi tapping upon his desk. Informality is nat- 
ural in so small a chamber, with men who have 



IN THE JERSEY ''STATES." 1 49 

known of each other from the cradle ; one cannot 
but remember the gavel banged to death so often 
in our own Congress, as well as the spectacle of 
the President of the French Chambers pumping 
madly at his bell and failing to pump therefrom 
silence. 

The bill asks the optional substitution of English 
for the French, to-day, as always, de rigiieur in the 
"States"; that is, that each speaker may choose 
in which language to speak. The Rector has read 
in the paper, he says, that the newly elected Jurat 
Lempriere, son of the Seigneur of Rozel (and of 
the Classical Dictionary family), has declared him- 
self in favor of English in the " States " ; so the 
Rector prepared the bill that (Monday) morning. 

At this several voices shout : " Hier ! hier I " 

In no wise disconcerted by this insinuation of 
Sunday work, the Rector argues his point, that the 
legislative language of the island is not the lan- 
guage of the people represented by that Legis- 
lature ; that the use of it obliged everybody to 
learn two languages whether he would or no ; all 
legal papers, bonds, contracts, deeds, etc., con- 
tinuing not the nineteenth-century language of the 
island, not even the eleventh-century language, 
but a language mixed and compounded of them 
and others, — neither Norman- French, French- 
French nor English. 

" Why compel a plain farmer of Grouville to learn 
two languages, each imperfectly ? " asks the Rector, 
dramatically, then answers : " Because he must 
build his barn in English but must not sell it so ! " 

The Deputy of St. Martin's follows with, '' Je 
seconde ; " and we smile. For this was instant 
proof of one of the Grouville rector's assertions. 



15^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

Not ^^ Je secoiide^'' but "J^appuie" the deputy would 
have said, had he spoken " French-French " and 
not Jersey French. As Httle Norman, or " French- 
French " was also the round and robust, " Hear ! 
hear ! " bursting forth every now and then. 

Another speaker hoped " the States " would 
make the bill d^projet de loi^ and assured them that if 
they refused to do so the press of England would 
take the matter up and give an offensive publicity 
to the fact that the English language had been re- 
jected by the Jersey " States." Neither was it by 
rejecting such a bill that the "States" would con- 
ciliate those Jersiais who clamored for reforms, 
etc. Only one or two of the speakers, so far, has 
spoken what could honestly be considered good ' 
French. The accent is not Continental, even 
when the grammar is and the words are. The 
greater the facility, where all were facile, the more 
apparent that the cadences, intonations, the whole 
"swing" of the sentences are insular when not 
actually British. But now the stately Dean arises 
■ — the stern-faced, dignified Dean, who so rarely 
smiles, and then as if it hurt him, — and small 
wonder, since his name is Baleine. 

The Dean thinks the question serious. He is 
confident (in full-mouthed accents of Britain) that 
the " States " are not en toiiche with the islanders, 
who are so prompt to throw discredit upon the 
Assembly. 

" The people do not consider the ' States ' as 
representative," reiterated the Dean. " Last year 
the ' States ' passed a resolution that Jerseymen 
were proud that French was their legislative lan- 
guage ! Could anything be more ridiculous, or 
contrary to fact ? " 



IN THE J ERSE V " STA TES." I 5 I 

" Hear ! hear ! '' he was answered. 

Dean Baleine (or Whale) speaks French with 
massive deliberation. His subjunctives roll forth 
as if to organ music. Sometimes, although rarely, 
he recalls those subjunctives and corrects them. 
The wildest, maddest, merriest listener could 
never mistake that French for his mother-tongue, 
nor yet the tongue of his father ; yet Dean 
Baleine is a native of Jersey, as all Jersey deans 
and legislators must be. He never would have 
said "en toicche^^'' meaning en rapport, but for his 
Oxford education and long ministry in a Yorkshire 
parish. His French would have been less of a 
perfect accomplishment than it is, and more a 
gift of circumstance. 

Somebody argues for the bill that it is unjust 
to " Queen Victoria " to compel her to read all 
State matters of the island in a foreign tongue. 
This draws the attention of our gallery to the fact 
that these islanders are indeed Jerseyraen before 
they are English ; for no Englishman ever names 
"Queen Victoria," but always "The Queen." 
The rectors only never fail to speak of Sa 
Majeste, and the natty Attorney-General, who 
looks like a very much refined and younger Sir 
William Vernon Harcourt, and whose name is 
William Venables Harcourt Vernon. Yet even 
the rectors speak of '' ia presse anglais e'^ as of 
a foreign one, as they might name la presse 
frangaise ; and everybody speaks of the " Gov- 
ernment of England ■' and not the " Home 
Government." 

The Conne'table of St. Helier's rises to speak. 
This conn^table, mayor of the capital of the island, 
is a very important personage, and evidently never 



152 HIRED FURNISHED. 

forgets that fact. He speaks against the bill, and 
no wonder ; for his French is as rapid and rush- 
ing as Niagara, his accent perfect, his " swing " en- 
tirely Continental, though his entirely French name 
has been Jersiais for generations. At what dis- 
advantage he would be with a change of languages, 
one who runs needs not stop to read. This chief 
conn^table of the island is bon bourgeois. In 
port and mien he reminds one of Gambetta. 
Even his raiment is not English, though ten paces 
away the Attorney-General sets hijiii a pattern of 
lavender trousers, buttonhole bouquet, and Bond 
Street tailoring. Thousands who might be the 
Connetable's brothers trot the dusky streets of 
provincial France, knowing no more of the lan- 
guage of Perfidious Albion than " English Spoken 
Here." He has a French wife, never speaks 
English when French will do as well, and he 
gesticulates as Frenchmen do. At this moment 
he agrees with the Dean that the people are not 
" en touche " with the " States " (he twinkles mis- 
chievously at the Briticism) ; but that want of 
touch is not the contest of languages, but the 
wish of the people to expel the clergy from the 
" States.'' 

Thereupon the Dean, who with all his dignity, 
culture, and commanding position and presence, 
is a remarkably diffident man, starts, actually 
blushes, and exclaims, " Exactly ! " 

The Connetable hopes the " States " will reject 
the proposition till the people themselves ask the 
change. 

To the onlookers it seems strange that no 
allusion is made to the dignity and picturesque- 
ness of antique habit in this matter. Nobody 



IN THE JERSE V " STA TES." I 5 3 

names Duke William, or the later ducal kings, 
whose fortunes carried the Channel Islands to 
and fro between two nations without even chang- 
ing their language. Nobody repeats the common 
Channel Island boast, " IVe conquered England, 
not England us ! " Nobody referred to the fact 
that the sovereigns of England rule here as 
Norman dukes. Nobody appeared to think of 
the Great Past at all save some New-Worlders in 
the gallery, who, without any great past of their 
own, are much addicted to that of other peoples. 
Nobody seemed to look at the question at all 
otherwise than with prosaic and utilitarian or 
prejudiced eye. 

A hayseed legislature of regions wild and woolly 
could be no more matter of fact. 

The motion was lost by 21 to 12 votes. Of 
the eight rectors present three voted for the bill, 
three voted against it in spite of their deliciously 
British accent and costumes, and two abstained 
from voting. The Norman knight also refrained 
from voting, although him alone certain galleryites 
wished to see voting for English. For this Nor- 
man knight is of the famous family to whom Charles 
II. on his restoration gave a grant of land in 
North America. That land was named New 
Jersey, and upon it were settled some 300 poor 
people sent to make their fortunes there from 
this right little, tight little Jersey of old. Our 
present Norman knight is a direct descendant of 
the Jersey De Carterets. The name ended with 
the direct male line two generations ago, but our 
Norman knight coming into possession of the 
original De Carteret seigniory of St. Ouen's, 
through the female heirs, assumed the family 



154 HIRED FURNISHED. 

name and transmits it to sons. He lives more 
in London and on the Continent tlian upon his 
Jersey estate, is a London clubman, a famous 
yachtsman, and withal the living portrait of men 
who bore shields and the leopards of Normandy 
into many a fight and foray. 



SARK. 155 



SARK. 

" BANK-holiday ' five-pounders ! ' ' week-enders ! ' " 
Mr. Dove expostulated. 

'^ Never mind ! We have been ^ five-pounders ' 
and ' week-enders ' ourselves before now, and 
harmed nobody. We can come back if at the 
pier we find the company of the usual London 
bank-holiday quality," argued Mrs. Dove. 

He was afraid, being a man. She was not 
afraid, being a woman. He was afraid that some 
of the wild young London clerks, off upon their 
Easter holiday with from Friday to Monday's 
cheap excursion tickets and five pounds to spend 
in three days, might make themselves too manifest 
on this excursion to Sark. Jersey was to-day over- 
run with them ; he begged Mrs. Dove to choose 
some other day. 

" Steamers not running on other days," she 
pointed out to him, " we should be obliged to take 
one of the large English packets to Guernsey and 
remain there over two or three nights for the 
weekly steamer to Sark. We cannot afford the 
time." 

"Bank-holiday 'five-pounders !' 'week-enders ! ' " 
he repeated disconsolately, having a thoroughly 
masculine yearning for the last word. 

The small Commerce had very little holiday 
air, bank or other, when they reached the pier. 



156 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Not more than a dozen people were standing 
about with shawls and overcoats, and they were not 
(ostentatiously at least) English '' week-enders." 
Some of them were undeniably French, others of 
the different Channel Islands ; only two betrayed 
themselves as English by guide-books and lively 
discussion of the '' National Budget." In time 
others came, none of bank-holiday aspect (at 
least London bank-holiday), and by nine o'clock 
the Commerce, without levity or unnecessary 
bustle, took up its joyless way. 

Joyless ? — and a holiday excursion ? Strange but 
true ; for the slow Commerce must cut her way to 
Sark on the bias, and the English Channel cut on 
the bias is something to make the whole animal 
kingdom joyless from molecule to man. Nor is 
it altogether of algebraic certainty, that passage. 
Many a harrowing tale doleful tongues had re- 
counted to the Doves, of excursion parties turned 
to abominations of desolation between these 
islands, overtaken by fog or met by sudden tem- 
pest, and rolling upon sickening billows without 
food for hours upon hours, even unto twenty-four. 
One party starved two days so near land that they 
heard cocks crow and dogs bark, but the steamer 
must not move in the darkness lest it strike a fatal 
rock. 

Fortunately it was not a bad passage, although 
not one of the twenty-five passengers could make 
up their minds to that effect, the ever-cheerful 
Doves excepted. In considerably less than three 
hours the lazy Commerce was within the mountain 
shadow of Sark. Then came the first realization 
that this was a general holiday, even though 
" banks " were almost the last thing to think of in 



SARK. 1 5 7 

the midst of this vividly picturesque commotion. 
Two other steamers were already landing excur- 
sionists from Guernsey in small boats ; bright holi- 
day attire flashed across the shadow of boats, 
steamers, and island rock ; the bright water flashed 
in spaces ; people called to each other in French, 
English, Jersiais, Sarkais. The Doves whispered 
in American : — 

" Did we ever see anything so foreign in all our 
days ? '^ 

Who could dream that Britannia rules these 
waves? Who dream that these lithe, swart boat- 
men jabbering beside the Commerce in an un- 
known tongue with gestures utterly unbritannic 
sometimes claim to be " Angleeshman." Yet on 
this feudal rock left behind from the Middle Ages, 
Queen Victoria is Sovereign Lady as much as she 
is anywhere outside the three chief islands. 

Were her Majesty to visit Sark, the little island 
of her many-island empire which keeps most to 
its ancient ways, she would seem much more of a 
foreigner than President Faure, for instance. In 
all these islands the close neighborhood of modern 
France is distinctly evident ; one never gets away 
from it even when the shimmering coast is out 
of sight. Whole streets in Jersey are French. 
French servants are in many families ; French 
workmen are at command ; even the English of 
the common people has a French construction 
of phrase and sentence. It is really France, nine- 
teenth-century France, only a couple of hours 
distant, that one feels in the other islands. In 
Sark it is France of ages ago, the ancient Nor- 
mandy which was still antique Normandy when 
some of its families were transplanted from Jersey 



158 HIRED FURNISHED. 

to Sark three centuries ago. The Channel Islands 
were not mere sea-girt rocks belonging to Nor- 
mandy. They tvere Normandy, a large portion of 
maritime Normandy, and their inhabitants ancient 
Normans with continental possessions as well as 
insular. No change whatever came upon them, 
their character, laws, and manners, by their Duke's 
conquest of England. They had nothing what- 
ever in common with England, and looked upon 
Britain as a conquering race looks upon the 
conquered. 

Somehow and strangely the scene reminded 
the Doves of their first landing on Capri. There 
was quite as vivid an impression of remote- 
ness from their natural habitat, the clamor was 
quite as dramatic and unintelligible, the boatmen 
were as picturesque as those Mediterranean 
Raphaels, Giuseppes, and Paolos. Yet they knew 
without touching it that the deeply blue water 
had a tang and a bite unknown to the volcanic, 
but no bluer Neapolitan Bay. They know that 
these jabberers can all speak a sort of Enghsh it 
they choose ; there are no girls in the boats ; 
above their heads, unsoftened by fig, olive, and 
vines, unsoftened by anything, rises a sheer wall 
of rock three hundred feet in the air, to cast a 
cold shadow over and far beyond the Commerce, 
the shadow of Sark. 

Only the rock-dwellers themselves. Frenchmen 
and perhaps a quarter of the other islanders of 
the Archipelago speak of the rock nowadays as, 
^' Cerq," as all who knew of it did once. To 
Enghshmen and to Americans, strollers like those 
Doves into by-ways of travel, it is the Island of 
Sark. 



SARK. 159 

Sark is one of the wonders of Europe, and its 
multitudinous caverns teeming with animal life 
make it one of the wonders of the world. It is a 
granite rock in the sea, against which the surges 
beat and bellow forever, tearing it into the strang- 
est, most grotesque forms, rending into caverns 
and tunnels, gnawing it into gothic pinnacles and 
spires, tearing it asunder bit by bit. In the 
sunniest day these inaccessible ocean-caves and 
monstrous fissures echo the eternal chant of the 
sea ; in storms the surges almost become silent 
from infinite power of rage. All about the rock 
are deep bays and caverns between masses of 
towering granite, and invisible except from the 
sea. These were long a favorite haunt of pirates 
and smugglers, whose cavernous treasures the 
tides hid. Elsewhere the sea has pierced fissures 
under natural bridges ; even the interior of the 
island is lined with gorges and ravines. Some do 
not run down to the sea, but terminate in precipi- 
tous cliffs. Upon towering Sark, sometimes called 
"Dizzy Island," the stranger feels that beneath him 
is a dusky, mysterious world, haunted by strange 
histories and romantic tragedies, — a world of 
mystery hidden from the most daring climber, 
the most experienced boatman. 

Scores of skeletons from ages long gone may 
even yet be whitening there, hid forever from the 
disintegrating light of day. Skeletons of fighting 
monks hurled from their sanctuary, skeletons of 
knights in armor, of corsair and smuggler and 
pretty maids stolen from convents and school, 
seem to the stranger even yet to be smiling the 
same sneering awful smile that all the living world 
carries under its masks. The strangers in this 



l60 HIRED FURNISHED. 

connection are very likely to remember what is 
usually spoken of as the Tragedy of the Mother- 
in-Law. 

A young English couple with the bride's mother, 
one l)lowy day sixty years ago when both sea and 
sky were of ominous aspect and the Sark boatmen 
of evil prophecy, wished to return to Guernsey in 
the small open gig in which they came to Cerq 
the day before. Everybody tried to persuade 
them not to tempt fate, but if they must go that 
day at least to take passage in the large island 
cutter which was about to leave for Guernsey. 
The young couple might have been persuaded 
but for the wife 's mother, who insisted upon the 
needless expense of a cutter passage, when their 
gig return was already paid. She prevailed and 
the tiny open boat put out. In a very few 
minutes it entered one of the terrible currents 
that sweep among the rocks and almost instantly 
capsized. The two sailors and the husband were 
carried out to sea and seen no more ; the ladies 
floated for awhile on the current with desperate 
cries, but sank before boats could reach them. 
The bodies were never recovered nor any trace of 
the ill-fated boat. 

A part of the story is grewsome. The following 
year a Sark fisherman discovered in the stomach 
of a large conger caught in the very current where 
the gig capsized the ivory handle of a parasol 
which belonged to one of the ladies. 

The Sarkais themselves, numbering about 575, 
seem only a lively sort of linnet clinging stubbornly, 
unimaginatively, to their 1274 acres, their islet 
three miles and a half long by one and a half 
wide. 



SARK. i6r 

"You never shall understand it," a Jersey- 
man was saying, " try as you may. Among 
islanders who neither read nor wrote it the mediae- 
val Norman-French has come to be this lingo, 
unintelligible everywhere on the globe except on 
Sark and its master isle Guernsey, eight miles dis- 
tant. Neither Jersey nor Alderney can understand 
it ; although it came from France, by the way of 
Jersey, a French uian can make no more of it 
than you can. These boatmen give orders for 
sailing and trimming their boats with the same 
nautical terms, it is said, used by French sailors in 
the time of Louis XIV." 

The Americans try to imagine the fate of their 
mother-tongue, unwritten, unread, and exiled for 
centuries on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. 
No wonder the Sark patois became siii generis 
when their island is so absolutely inaccessible. 
Once upon a time the Lords of the English 
Admiralty were out upon a tour of inspection. 
They had given no notice of their coming, so 
there was no preparation on Sark to receive them. 
They cruised about till they were tired of trying to 
find a harbor and finally steamed away having 
found none. 

The Doves alighted in the boat of one named 
Pierre. He had every appearance of a Norman 
fisherman, or rather Breton of the olden time. 
He wore almost precisely the costume those con- 
tinental fishermen have much discarded for hats 
and caps bought in town. Pierre wore the U'icot 
or knit jacket known in America as a " Guernsey " 
or "Jersey." His young face was bronzed and 
covered with heavy wrinkles, his head was covered 
by a scarlet cap with long tasselled end floating 

1 1 



1 62 HIRED FURNISHED. 

upon his shoulder, — exactly the costume of Gilliat 
in Victor Hugo's " Travailleurs de la Mer." Pierre's 
vocabulary, in anything comprehensible to the 
Americans, was evidently Hmited. He told them 
he could not give them change for the half-crown 
they offered him, for he had but "one cheelang." 
Thereupon they spoke to him in French and he 
answered, not in patois, but in queer French, 
although better than his English. But when he 
finds that they can make the change regardless 
of his shilling and give him his exact fare, he 
speaks no more in any language whatever. 

The tiny pier is crowded with women and girls 
watching the arrivals. Alas and alackaday ! 
Here the more sensitive adaptability of women 
to varying conditions proves itself yet once again. 
Though Thrones totter, Principalities and Powers 
reel, the Sarkais never dreams of doffing his 
tricot or (once adopted) quitting his flaming 
head-stocking. Let but a single visitor come in 
a city frock and in a week the younger Sarkaises 
will have developed something more or less like 
it. The display as the Doves walked the length 
of the little pier suggested that last summer's 
departures had unanimously left their hats behind 
them, especially when they recognized Oxford 
College colors on the bands. 

Alas, too ! and alackaday ! for the self-con- 
sciousness of feminine adaptabihty sitting upon 
walls of masonry at the base of a feudal rock in 
the sea, and meeting the gaze of arrivals from the 
modern world, — that smirking self-consciousness, 
so different from tlie adorable aba7ido7i of russet- 
cheeked Leon, Pierre, Henri, and Jean. '^ Look 
at us ! " it cried without speaking a word. " And 



SARK. 163 

observe your error if you imagine we are only 
dairy-maids of Sark. Don't we go every week 
to the Market at Guernsey, and can we not trade 
our garden vegetables in that metropolis of fashion, 
Peter Port, for milliners' roses and poppies gone 
only a bit to seed ? " 

From the pier and the ragged feet of the rock 
they passed through a grotto littered with wheel- 
barrows, nets, and tackle. But for that grotto, 
which is no grotto at all but an artificial tunnel, 
they would be obliged to soar aloft and scale the 
sheer rock like geese in baskets. Even so late 
as 1866, when a new seigneur built the present 
harbor to enable arrivals to land less often upon 
their heads, there was not so much as a cart road 
upon the island, everything was carried to the 
top on men's backs or clumsy sledges. The 
manor was then a dilapidated farmhouse, the 
lord, very much of a rustic. 

One of the two tunnels through the island's 
outer wall is as old as the Sarkais themselves, 
having been built by the first lord, Helier de 
Carteret, to whom after the monks had aban- 
doned and the pirates been driven away from 
"Cerq," Queen Elizabeth gave the seigneurial 
rights in 1563, and who came over from Jersey 
with forty families and lived with his young wife 
in a thatched " manor house " of mud and stones. 
They brought the Jersey Norman-French with 
them, now the unintelligible patois of Sark. 

This first seigneur was of the De Carterets, to 
one of whom, Sir George de Carteret, Charles the 
Second afterwards gave territory in North America 
to be called New Jersey. 

" Shall we never reach the top ? " panted the 



1 64 HIRED FURNISHED. 

lady, climbing, ever climbing, this almost perpen- 
dicular gully between solid earth-walls, said by 
guide-books (and guide-books cannot tell a lie) 
to be a '^ charming valley," but which valley 
might be one of Upas or Deadly Nightshade for 
aught they knew. 

Surely there will be an end to the torrid toil in 
time. " All things end that begin, do they not?" 
they said, " even deep gullies on small islands." 
That day they doubted it. 

But though there was no End, there was surely 
a Beyond, for high above their heads they heard 
the island jargon tossed from height to height ; 
and for those echoing heights, that aerial Beyond, 
they strove. 

In a glorious, a triumphant instant they emerged 
from that Valley not of Shadow. They stood 
rejoicing upon a pleasant table-land waving with 
green and gold, veined with shadow-vaulted lanes, 
and streaked with fair roads, in the very centre 
of which towered aloft, a far-away landmark, a 
mighty Bishop with white, lawny arms extended 
in benediction, Bishop Windmill grinding the corn 
of the islanders at the seigneur's expense. 

Round all was the divine, the infinite sea. 
They were almost lifted from their feet by the 
sudden glory of the revelation, and by the thrill- 
ing breath of windy uplands catching them in 
godlike embrace and lifting them from heaviness 
it seemed forever. No wonder limp Jerseymen 
come here to be " braced." They were not 
cool. Nevertheless nothing is more certain than 
that they would have turned the very coldest of 
shoulders to whoever had dared hint that that 
vergeless Radiance, that dazzling mystery of tragic 



SARK. 165 

depths over which the creature crawls like a 
mite, was only the trafficking English Channel, 
scratched by dingy tugs, rumpled by peddling 
tramps, smutted by colliers, its verge only twenty- 
four miles away. In the distance sleeping Jersey 
floats, and nearer sleeping Guernsey. " It cannot 
be the Jersey where we this very day were reft 
from our breakfast by screams of the fussing 
Commerce. Nay, it is a poet's dream, a Lotus 
Isle of haunting memories and music, a Slumber 
Land of divine phantoms ; perish the thought 
that it is at this moment the Jersey of noon- 
tide dish-waters and greasy bones," declaimed 
a Dove. 

" St. Peter's dome ! " said the other irrelevantly. 
At least so it would have seemed to any but that 
Dove-cote pair. They knew differently. Years 
before, all one long winter in Rome their palace 
windows took in a dream of distant Tivoli. The 
days were often cold in Rome, and through the 
piazza a bitter wind sometimes swept, or rain fell 
in cold sheets. All that winter Tivoli was a 
dream city upon a slumbrous hill, a city of nebu- 
lous spires and roofs, shifting, floating, visionary, 
a mystery of unearthly loveliness, haunting the 
horizon, to fill the soul with a very rapture of 
longing. Then the time came that they left 
Rome behind them and crossed the campagna 
to Tivoli. Through filthy streets, amid beggars 
whose like was on a thousand easels, they man- 
aged to get to their appartamento. It had been 
reported to them clean, it was not ; and clouds 
hung low, and foul smells rose high upon Tivoli. 
The lady stepped upon the loggia and for a 
moment was silent. Then a peculiar sound drew 



1 66 HIRED FURNISHED. 

the other to her side. And thus together they 
saw, deep in the enchantment of distance a golden 
star blazing in the heart of a filmy cloud, a dream 
city with nebulous spires and roofs, a very Celes- 
tial City to fill a soul with rapture of longing. 

" I would reach it though upon hot plough- 
shares," she murmured. 

" No ! Rather should it remain a dream for- 
ever," said the wiser one. " What fools these 
mortals be to pluck the heart from every poetic 
mystery ! 'What is Man? When he 's before the 
Altona Gate he wants to be in Italy, and when 
he 's in Italy he wants to be back before the 
Altona Gate.'" 

Cerq was known to Rabelais in 1540. Panurge 
speak of it and its neighbor Herm as Terres des 
voleiu's et larrons^ and its inhabitants as worse than 
cannibals. Its inaccessibility, its numerous caverns 
and deep low-tide harbors hidden entirely at high 
tide made it of greatest service to lawless sea- 
rangers of every sort. Even now the very sight 
of its romantic architecture almost intoxicated one 
of these innocent Doves with fierce yearnings to 
go and be a pirate too. 

" Away with fan and parasol ! Avast there, 
bottines de Pi?iet and gants de Dent I Avaunt 
Bond Street tailoring and complexion of Oxford 
cloisters ! Away ! Away ! Away ! And Ho, 
Minions ! Unto us slim rapiers, burly cutlasses 
and scimitars of flame ! Let us swear dashing 
oaths. Love. Let us swagger with magnificent im- 
precation and wear thing-um-bobs of velvet and 
what's-names of leather to our knees! Let us 
be Bold and Bad, Love, Boldest and Baddest of 
Buccaneers ! " 



SARK. 1-67 

"The Seigneur would soon clap you into 
jail ! " he answered, and both laughed. 

They had heard of that jail. Once upon a 
time a vagabond Sarkaise was committed to jail 
for a term of twenty-four hours. Finding herself 
somewhat ennuied she complained to the con- 
stables that it was impossible for her to breathe 
with the door shut. The constables appreciated 
her difficulty, allowed the door to remain open 
and the prisoner's gossips to bring their knitting 
and to squat on the threshold. Once upon an- 
other time the bailiff and jurats (from jurat our 
word "jury"), over officially from Guernsey, were 
met by the Cerq preVot with bitter complaint that 
he had to keep the prisoners at his own cost. 
The authorities asked how many prisoners he had 
had that year. " Eh mais," was the answer, 
"none this year." "How many last year?" 
"One." " How many the year before?" "Well, 
I cannot tell ; I am only prevot since two years." 

The most dashing history connected with Sark 
is of the first years of the thirteenth century and 
Wistace le Moigne, or Eustace the Monk, who, 
after a wild and romantic career on land and sea 
was killed in a naval battle 12 17. There were 
two brothers " Eustace " of either Flemish or 
Boulognese origin, both of whom were educated 
men, and both of whom threw off their cowls for 
helmets and visors. The story of their exploits on 
land bears much analogy to that of Robin Hood. 
Ravaging any territory they were invariably kind 
to the poor and tender to the helpless, but filled 
with ferocious hatred to fief-holding priests and 
barons. They were poisoned thorns in the flesh 
of Philip Augustus. The Comte de Boulogne 



1 68 HIRED FURNISHED. 

could not sleep because of them. As bandits and 
outlaws they became a centre of a world of myth 
and fable. Adam le Roi, who wrote fifty years 
after Wace and who was a minstrel at the court of 
the Duke of Brabant, is supposed to be the author 
of an amusing poem describing Eustace as study- 
ing the black art in Spain, and how he gave him- 
self up to piracy and the various elfish tricks he 
played upon his enemy the Comte de Boulogne. 

In 1 202 the brothers disappeared from before 
the archers of the Comte de Boulogne, to appear 
in 1203 on the side of John Lackland, of England, 
in his troubles with the King of France. They 
were evidently mercenaries, though such brave and 
brilliant fighters, for they were willing to fight upon 
either side. In 1205 they were sea-rovers and 
full blown pirates in name of the worthless John. 
In his name they scoured this part of the Channel, 
and they took possession of Sark in the king's 
name. They were both excommunicated by the 
Pope, which may have stirred superstitious fears but 
did not reform their manners ; a price was put 
upon the head of Wistace fame by his suzerain, 
Comte de Boulogne, which the count never was 
called upon to pay. John Lackland himself was not 
sure of their purchased loyalty, and demanded as 
hostages for that fealty the wife and daughter of the 
elder Eustace and the uncle of both. With this 
daughter came mischief, as mischief came to Eden 
with Adam's daughter Eve. Nobody knows what 
the young daughter of this wild blood thought of 
miserable John Lackland, but it is told that he was 
conquered by her charms and gave her a palace in 
London, an estate in Norfolk and the seigneurie of 
Cerq. It is extraordinary how this paid fighter 



SARK. 169 

fought sometimes upon the side of France, some- 
times of England. In 12 11 he was in the Enghsh 
service, then in a quarrel with the king about 
his daughter, he disguised himself in one of the 
many characters he delighted to assume, penetrated 
through the territory of his old enemy, Comte de 
Boulogne, reached Philip Augustus in Paris, and 
was given the charge to reorganize the French 
fleet. Again he came into the Channel, this time 
with French ships. Sark was still in the hands of 
his brother, the younger Eustace, who was there 
with his family. With him was the uncle and the 
lovely daughter of the elder Eustace, both of 
whom had escaped from John. Where the wife 
was is not told, or how long the fair maid had 
remained contented on a savage island after the 
rough luxury of a king's palace. In 12 14 one of 
John's officers, D'Aubigny and his chevaliers 
scaled these tremendous walls in a net and with a 
coup de filet took the daughter prisoner together 
with Eustace the younger, the uncle, and forty-four 
other prisoners. The daughter was sent to England 
and put under the charge of the Abbess of Win- 
ton, — a way robber-kings had with their stolen 
beauties and complacent convent superiors. 
Eustace the elder, with his French archers and 
sailors then pillaged Folkestone, and a little later 
descended upon these islands to intercept three 
galleys sent by John to reinforce D'Aubigny, thus 
to avenge himself for the captivity of his daughter, 
brother, and uncle. D'Aubigny was probably 
driven off from the island, for he was one of the 
few barons left to John on Runnymede. At any 
rate, John was obliged to free the brother and 
uncle, but he still clung to the daughter, who was 



I/O HIRED FURNISHED. 

lield till his death a year later, in 1216, when the 
Abbess of Winton gave her up to her father. 
Eustace the Monk was beaten in 1 2 1 7 by John's 
bastard son Richard, and his head paraded on a 
lance that all might know that the famous sea- 
pirate and land-robber could frighten the world no 
more. 

" Minx ! " remarked a Dove, poised upon the 
edge of a sheer promontory, a brutal tusk of Sark 
thrust outward toward any threatening invader. 
'' Minx ! Don't tell me she did n't throw the 
net herself down to D'Aubigny and her royal 
lover's men? Don't tell me she did n't run under 
the coup de filet as fast as her medieval legs 
could carry her ! Don't tell me she was not fright- 
fully ennuied on this island in a thatched hut and 
only island fare, a week's sail from England, 
although now only five or six hours' steam ! 
Don't tell me she did n't hate a place where she 
could not replenish her hair-dye, where she 
could n't spread the tails of her gowns, and at- 
tract attention to her jewelled girdle and head- 
dress ! Don't tell me — " 

" I won't," said the other. 

In the sixth century Sark was in the possession, 
of monks, St. Magloire, said to be a Welshman, 
their superior. He came to the island in 565, 
and the spot where he built a cottage for himself, 
and cells for his sixty-two pupils, is still called the 
Moinerie. There are still left a few traces of his 
monastery in the grounds of the seigneurie, nota- 
bly an old holy water stoup from the monastic 
church. He died in Jersey, and was buried in 
Sark. He is storied to have slept there peacefully 
through all the wild changes of French and Eng- 



SARK. 171 

lish possession, for about three hundred years. 
But it happened that in the ninth century a king 
of neighboring Brittany promised to build a mon- 
astery for some poor monks, if they, by hook or 
by crook, could procure some holy relics to put 
in it. Then these honest monks bethought them 
that on lonely Sark was the unprotected grave of a 
saint whose bones ought to fill the King Nomenoe's 
requirements. They sailed over to the dizzy island 
with a bag, tradition does not say how large a bag, 
and they returned with bones in that bag. The 
King kept his promise and built a magnificent 
monastery to receive the bones. This was the 
Monastery of St. Magloire de Lehon, and one 
of the fine edifices destroyed in the revolution 
of 1793. 

For centuries Sark was first one king's then 
another's, overrun by cutthroats, soldiers of for- 
tune, renegades, and stragglers from two coun- 
tries, the Barry Lyndons of their time. Hosts 
of these swashbucklers were secretly allowed to 
man and provision galleys at St. Malo for piracy 
upon Sark, or anywhere else, so long as they only 
relieved the country of their presence. In 1549 
again only a few monks were on the island ; the 
robbers took easy possession and lived upon that 
impregnable rock, by preying upon Guernsey and 
Alderney and such unlucky vessels as sailed 
within their horizon. It was then that Panurge 
told Pantagruel that Cerq was an island of 
assassins and w^orse, for " i/s nous mangeront tons 
vifsr 

Upon towering little Sark then came a bit of 
history like the story of Troy's wooden horse. 
Some Dutch or Flemish adventurers in 1555 



172 HIRED FURNISHED. 

begged permission to bring to land, and to de- 
posit for prayers in the holy chapel, the coffin of 
their dead commander. Permission was given 
provided every man came unarmed. Up the terri- 
•ble rock they were lifted, for there was no entrance 
tunnel then, and upon the sunny table-land, with 
bowed heads and signs of grief, they followed 
the coffin to the church. At midnight they broke 
the coffin open, armed themselves with its con- 
tents, and drove the other robbers into the sea. 
For years Sark was deserted ; then Queen Eliza- 
beth gave it to Helier de Carteret in 1564, and to 
De Carterets it belonged until 1731. 

The farmers of Sark are still forty land-holders, 
as Elizabeth's De Carteret divided the land. They 
cannot divide their land or sell an inch of it from 
the main proportion. They cannot sell to each 
other without the seigneur's permission ; they rarely 
ask that permission, and for the best of reasons, 
■ — nobody wants it. Stout is their rock-clinging. 
Not for Cerq are dreams of adventure in other 
climes, not for it thrilling quests on far seas, not 
for it nature's pageantry of other zones. The 
Sarkais are almost without the sailor instinct of 
their sea-neighbors the Bretons; boats, not ships^ 
are their desire. Upon their bit of rock they 
find all they need and ask, the bread their fathers 
ate, and with no more butter or jam than they 
had. 

If ever a farm is sold upon the island, the sei- 
gneur is entitled to every thirteenth pound of the 
purchase-money. He can (and does) compel 
the Sarkais to keep the roads in order. He is 
really King of Sark. Though imder the control 
of the Queen's representative^ the Lieutenant- 



SARK. ly^ 

Governor of Guernsey, Sark is in a sense (a small 
one) independent. The seigneur or feudal lord 
has the right to appoint the officers of the court ; 
that is, the seneschal or judge, his deputy the 
prevot, and the greffier. The seneschal has com- 
plete jurisdiction in petty offences, but his right 
of punishment is limited to three days of imprison- 
ment, or a fine of "three livres tournois," or about 
four shillings. Where such gentle punishment 
does not fit the crime the offender is sent to 
Guernsey. There is a Sark Court of Common 
Pleas, composed of the forty householders, and 
at which the lord mast be present, either person- 
ally or by deputy, and his consent is necessary for 
the enactment of any ordinance. Absolute veto 
of anything relating to island affairs is his right. 
He could forbid any visitors if he chose. 

What an atmosphere of picturesque romance 
envelops the word "seigneur." With what clang 
of arms, what clarion cries, what music of beat- 
ing hoofs, comes down through the centuries 
vision and echo of the seigneur's tribute of armed 
men to his king. What pageantry of waving 
standards, shining armor and emblazoned shields, 
flits with the words " lord of the manor," to 
show the nineteenth century what it was to be 
a feudal lord, what it is to hold the lordly rights 
of many a lordly generation. 

The Seigneur of Sark is only a plain " Mister." 
A seigneur could never be otherwise in these 
islands. The Norman seigneurs of the Channel 
Islands were not nobles ; they were merely men en- 
titled to bear arms, and without other dignity. In 
all the islands they were a rustic gentry, with little or 
no superiority in manner of living, and in close rela- 



1/4 HIRED FURNISHED. 

tions with the people and the bourgeoisie. Their 
manors were thatched and their courtyards no 
cleaner than those of their neighbors, who were 
their tenants. Within comparatively few years the 
Seigneur of Sark was " untutored," although not 
precisely "savage," and his manor-house or sei- 
gneurielQSS than a decent English farm-house. The 
father of the present seigneur was nothing more 
knightly and bold than a clergyman should be. He 
bought the manor and its rights when they came 
into the market at the death of the seigneur before 
him, Pierre Le Pellew, who was drowned as so many 
Sarkais are in crossing over to Guernsey. 

Pierre Pellew was a headstrong man who thought 
he knew more about wind and weather than the 
islanders who bade him beware of the rising tem- 
pest. He wanted to go to a dinner in Guernsey 
to which he had been invited, and probably felt 
that he and storms were too old friends to do 
each other harm. The whole island watched his 
boat as it tossed on the waves, every man, woman, 
and child with heart in mouth. It was not a long 
watch. The sea swallowed him within a mile of 
his island home, swallowed him and the boatmen, 
who had gone much against their own wills. The 
island rector, a Swiss (who never learned English), 
saw the tragedy and was so affected by it that for 
many a year, some say as long as he lived, he 
never dared leave the island. 

When the Reverend Mr. Collins bought the 
island it is said that he was very much surprised 
by the power he bought with it. When the 
islanders, in conventional speed, addressed him 
as a superior being he had much ado to keep 
from lausfhino; in their faces. He made a just and 



SARK. 175 

generous seigneur and was always a gentleman. 
His son, the present seigneur, is given to nocturnal 
adventure on land and sea, arriving on Guernsey 
and Jersey at any hour of the night, and consort- 
ing more congenially with rough sailors and the 
odd fish of waterside inns than with men of his own 
quality. When the Doves saw him, he was driving 
a horse furiously, at least held the reins in hand, 
with a very red face and a meaningless smile. 

The rights and tide belong to the estate. Sei- 
gneur Peter may come and Seigneur Paul may go, 
but the rights go on forever, that is, forever thus far. 
Those of Sark have never ceased since Queen 
Bess gave them, and added thereunto a cannon 
which any one may see in a litde tower back of the 
seigneurie, and upon which read '' Don de la 
Reyne au Seigneur de Serck, 1573." Those 
rights have not ceased, though once only a fooHsh 
woman was left to carry them on. In 1779, on 
October 20, Madame Le Pellew, widow of a sei- 
gneur and guardian of his five children, took the 
lord's seat in the Chefs Plaids. The only record 
at hand of her administration is the decree that 
" whoever shall sell anything on the island without 
consent of the seigneur or his representative, shall 
pay a fine of fifty francs, of which one quarter goes 
to the King (of England), one quarter to the sei- 
gneur, the other half to the poor." This regulation 
or law is writ in French, as is all official business 
to this day. Information is not to be unearthed as 
to whether Seigneuress Pellew took command of 
the island army or not ; for there was one in her 
time. The army, of about twenty bold warriors, 
existed until within a few years ; the Rev. Seigneur 
Collins was its last colonel, and drilled it upon oc- 



176 HIRED FURNISHED. 

casions with merely a military cap and sword worn 
with his clerical suit. Some who remember these 
brilHant occasions, when Peace and War kissed 
each other, say the army was disbanded by the 
Reverend Colonel Seigneur in disgust that he 
could not make it stand upright. Therefore, were 
he called upon for service to his sovereign, it would 
not be with lance and javelin, with arrows tipped 
with iron, with marching men and waving banners, 
but with Bank of England notes. 

Nothing is necessary to become a feudal lord 
of the nineteenth century in the Channel Islands, 
but money enough to buy a marketed manor, and 
to be of Channel Island birth. 

On the serene table-land is no village, though 
every cluster of two or three farms has a name, 
always a French one, as Rousel, La Fregondt^e, 
Le Fort, etc. Indeed every crag, promontory, 
cave, everything has its name in that language. 
The wonderfully picturesque thatched cottages 
and farm-houses are widely scattered, and as there 
is but one shop the delicious lane upon which it 
stands does not call itself High Street. About 
the ugly modern church, of date 1822, the homely 
nests gather somewhat more closely, and are 
known as La Ville. This group of half a score 
of houses is of course the capital, for here is the 
school and the famous prison. There is the " Rue 
du Sermon " as the French Huguenots called the 
way to church ; ''going to Sermon" was their habit, 
as the modern is " to church." Services in the 
church (although Church of England) are always 
in French, except on midsummer afternoons when 
an English service is held for the sake of visitors. 

The author of the French translation of the 



SARK. 177 

Book of Common Prayer was a Channel Islander, 
John Durel. He was born in Jersey in 1625, and 
entered Merton College, Oxford, at the age of 
fifteen. On account of the troubles caused by 
the Civil War he like many other students re- 
tired to France and took his M. A. in the college 
of Caen. He then studied Divinity (as many 
Channel Island clergymen do still) in France, at 
the Protestant University of Saumur, and in 1647 
returned to Jersey as chaplain to Sir George de 
Carteret. 

The liturgy was read in French for the first 
time on Sunday, the 14th of July, 1661, in the 
chapel of the Savoy, London, — Mr. Durel preach- 
ing in the forenoon, Mr. Le Couteur, then Dean 
of Jersey, in the afternoon. In 1662 the French 
translation was published. In 1669 John Durel 
was made D. D., in 1677 Dean of Windsor and 
of Wolverhampton, and Rector of Witney, also 
Registrar of the Garter. He died on the 8th of 
June, 1683. 

In La Ville of Sark are also the rustic schools 
where moon-faced, foreign-looking boys and girls 
are promoted to English after sufficient profi- 
ciency in French, and where they speak neither, 
once out from under the master's eye. There 
too is the ancient thatched building, now a farm- 
house, until 1822 the church of Cerq. A Wes- 
leyan chapel is in La Ville, but the idea of 
Norm an- French Methodists on a rock of the 
Middle Ages was absurdly incongruous. There 
are also two graveyards, old and new, the latter 
round the ugly church. In the old, a weedy en- 
closure within high hedge-walls, the inscriptions 
are nearly all in French. More than one Hugue- 

12 



17^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

not sleeps there in sunny peace, fled here from the 
Royal Rascal who revoked. Over the church- 
yard-graves English is less unfrequent. " De 
Carteret " occurs upon them many times. The 
Doves remarked it also upon '' Notices to the 
Public " (always in two languages), signed by the 
" conn^table " or mayor (not constable) of Cerq. 
The name flourishes, though the " dynasty " be no 
more. Compared with some of the Sarkais their 
present lord is a parvenu^ and " Collins " does not 
sound like a Norman name. 

Entering the ugly church the Doves fell a-won- 
dering. Who could have worked this miracle? 
Who transformed this Mission of St. Prig into a 
temple of the shining gods ? No man had hand 
there save as menial, they were sure. Those hands 
were worthy to wave laurel branches and with 
bare ivory feet to keep ever aflame white fire on 
altars of snow. She was patrician, they knew as 
well as if they saw her, for only the taste of genera- 
tions of culture could have thus transformed mean 
posts of painted pine into columns of flawless 
pearl ensphered by mists of the dawn, with font, 
altar, and canopy of alabaster, upon which the 
fairest of the Olympians had breathed blue and 
rosy clouds. 

The seigneurie is near this capital of Cerq. It 
is a comfortable modern mansion, with a tower 
and the usual insular indifference to views of the 
sea. Hundreds of better form the residential sub- 
urbs of Boston. 

The ancient chapel of the manor stands close 
by, a tiny block of thatched stone. The holy- 
water stoup is said to remain from a sixth century 
church upon the same site, and of which also a 



SARK. 1 79 

small pile of stones remains. An ancient metrical 
life of St. Magloire, written in old Norman- French, 
describes very minutely how the Monk of Lehon 
in Brittany made him into a '' relic." 

In the courtyard of the seigneurie they met a 
milk-white steed. The lady beside it had no 
falcon on her wrist, and none could imagine the 
milk-white steed a palfrey, because of its bray. 
The lady was not riding to joust or tournament, 
she was the English governess driving the nursery 
out in a cart. The gardens, open to the pubhc, 
for the present seigneur follows his father's gener- 
ous example, are said to be fine. In them figs 
ripen and English green-house flowers bloom in 
the open air. 

'■^ Rien ! rien du tout I ''^ the old gardener as- 
sured them ; " the vicarage ladies took every 
camellia for Easter Sunday." 

Those vicarage ladies ! How the Americans 
wished to see them, ivory-footed and with laurel 
boughs wending their way through the " rue du 
Sermon," to services at St. Prig's. How they 
wished to see their divine faces as they sang 
there our own familiar hymns turned into French. 

" All the same," remarked one of the Doves, 
" we are only bank-holiday excursionists, and a 
joke to them.'' 

There are two Sarks, — Sark, and Little Sark. 
Little Sark is the space of two or three small farms 
separated from the main island by a terrific chasm. 
At low tide this chasm is walled and floored with 
murderously jagged rocks ; at high tide the sea 
roars through it. The incessant action of tides 
upon a mineral vein in the island rock has made 
Little Sark, but has left a natural bridge between 



l80 HIRED FURNISHED. 

the two about 290 feet above high-water mark. 
At this exposed end of Sark the winds are fierce 
at timeS; and tragic tales are told of its work. In 
earlier days, before this bridge was guarded as it 
is now by a wall of solid masonry, the children of 
Little Sark going down to La Ville to school often 
crossed on all fours for safety. " I seldom crossed 
so," a Sark woman afterwards told the Doves on 
Alderney, " for when the wind blew father always 
met us on the Great Sark side and helped us 
across." Many traditions connect this coupee with 
the master passion of love, as greedy of victims on 
Sark as elsewhere, even although all are akin. 
Rival lovers have met there, it is said, and only one 
has ever been seen again ; for the tide rises twice 
a day, and even on Sark a man may not be missed 
in twelve hours, particularly if he be of Great 
Sark and she of Little. One story of these tells of 
the lover who came home, ghastly, dishevelled, 
stung by mysterious torments, yet dumb as the 
rocks against which the consuming sea beats. He 
disappeared from home and was known to haunt 
the foot of the rocks in his boat, like a spectre, 
ever looking downward as if expecting the sea to 
give up its dead to accuse him. He was seen no 
more in La Ville ; when he came home at rare 
intervals he never spoke. He was supposed to 
be under the spell of one of those mysterious 
obsessions which are so often the fate of island 
people largely intermarried, and none save two or 
three suspected the hot, panting encounter upon 
the bridge, from which one man had gone over 
and one returned thus scourged by silent furies. 
One day the obsessed skulked about la coupee 
as he always did when not in his boat. He saw a 



SARK. l8l 

bridal party approach and cross in couples. As 
the bride and bridegroom came close upon him 
he gave a terrible cry and fled to the edge of the 
precipice. He was caught midway and found 
to be raving mad, having seen the living faces of 
his rival and his love, and believing he saw them 
in death's world ; a violent fever followed, the 
man recovered, went decently to his farm again, 
and never spoke of the mercy which cast his rival, 
who was his brother, into a safe cleft of the rock 
instead of upon the jags below. 

Until comparatively late years the church tithes 
were paid in the ancient manner of an actual 
portion of the produce of a man's land. One 
lowering day a Jean, Leon, or Paul shouldered a 
huge load of wheat to take to the rectory barn. 
The wind was wild from storm caves of the 
Atlantic, and the neighbors advised him to wait 
for a stiller day ; but Jean or Paul, or L6on had 
already waited till almost the last day for paying 
his tithes ; besides, he needed new milk-cans and 
a rake by the next boat that should go over to 
Guernsey. The wind was not so very high, it was 
in his favor, and he was sturdy on his legs, as 
everybody knew. People on Little Sark watched 
the huge mass as it sped all too swiftly on its way. 
Nothing could be seen but the moving yellow load, 
the man being entirely hidden beneath it. It sped 
like a winged bird till the narrow bridge was so 
nearly crossed that the watchers began to breathe 
freely, though the wind over the stubble abated 
none of its wild jeering. Suddenly the yellow 
bird rose an instant in the air, was caught there 
by a monstrous gust and whirled over like a single 
straw. The next moment the broken fragments 



I 82 HIRED FURNISHED. 

of a man strewed the rocks below and never since 
has Little Sark paid its tithes from its backs, but 
from its pockets. 

The Americans walked all the long day, save 
during the one hour that they rested on a vine- 
clad rock. Strange that so much walking may 
be found within so little space ; that the broad 
roads seem so much like broad roads elsewhere, 
in breadth, even in length. During many min- 
utes' walk, the sea often is not seen at all, only 
pleasant farms, blooming orchards and gardens, 
with sleek cattle feeding upon sunny slopes. The 
charm of distance even is not lacking, at least an 
illusion of distance ; and sometimes Bishop Wind- 
mill loomed grandly vague, spiritualized by a 
remoteness of perhaps only two miles. From 
various points, Little Sark, high in air, seemed 
almost a part of some other far away island. 
What is called distance is, after all, chiefly a matter 
of one's own eyes and imagination, and fairyland 
lies very near to those who most earnestly desire it. 

Said a Dove, looking upward and away beyond 
where they knew an awful chasm, a valley of the 
Shadow of Death, was spanned by a narrow bit of 
rock beyond which was dazzling light : " Hark 1 
Do we not seem to see horses and chariots, and 
to hear trumpeters and pipers with singers and 
players on stringed instruments, before beautiful 
gates of a celestial city?" 

"No, dear," said the other, "I do not I I do 
not wish to see. I do not wish to hear. I do 
not wish to end our pilgrimage. It is heavenly 
as it is." 

Among Mrs. Dove's mems was this : " Never 
take luncheon at a hotel when time is precious." 



SARK. 183 

Time was precious, yet not less so tlian the 
other hours that golden one during which they 
perched high above the singing sea and decided 
that they were greater than emperors, as they 
certainly were higher. " Give me health and a 
day," they quoted from Emerson, " and I will 
make the pomp- of emperors ridiculous." While 
they lunched, wrapped in the very heart of august 
Nature, and dreamily talked of Eustache le Moine 
and his naughty mediaeval daughter, of fights and 
stratagems, of archers and scaling ladders, of cor- 
sairs bold and blood-thirsty pirates, of passion's 
tragedies, of fate, free-will, and heredity, which is 
fate, half their fellow-excursionists sat upon the 
piazzas of hotels and wondered what to do next 
now lunch was over. 

" Mem,''^ wrote the lady upon the tablets of her 
memory : " Always provide sandwiches of potted 
meats for excursions ; they leave no greasy fingers, 
and fate, free-will, foreknowledge, need not wait 
for the picking of a bone or the rending of a 
slice ; always take a bottle of wine, and camp 
without regard to water ; always take cheap glasses 
and Japanese napkins to be left behind; always 
be provided with a fish-net or twine bag to be 
folded away empty after luncheon, as if it did not 
exist." 

" Tout lie meme^'' she murmured, as they rose 
from that golden hour, " Tout de meme if every 
bank- holiday-maker leaves oHve-stones, orange- 
peel, penny glasses, paper napkins, and a bottle 
behind." 

With care she gathered everything together, 
stuffed the glasses full, and placed them beside 
the upright bottle. " Now I have done up the 



1 84 HIRED FURNISHED. 

dishes, come, let us be heavenly pilgrims again, 
only taking good care not to reach any final city." 

Refreshed and with health, although with now 
but half a day, still considering themselves greater 
than emperors because happier, they again took 
up their pilgrimage. Coming towards them by a 
circuitous route comprehending both sides of the 
road, they recognized a co-excursionist, a five- 
pounder and week-ender, one of the morning's 
clear-headed debaters of the Budget, who gravely 
wished to know if " lay, gem'l tell ware " he was. 
Next, a ravishing old woman, with broad-brimmed 
hat tied under the chin, and a little woollen shawl 
worn fichu-fashion across her breast, who was going 
to her cows for the mid- day milking. She carried 
the usual narrow-necked vessel used for milking in 
all the Channel Islands, and which only expert milk- 
ers can use, the art of hitting the small orifice 
being acquired only with long practice. The 
Americans always wonder what sort of milking- 
vessels were used while this amphora was in pro- 
cess of evolution, unless it really descended from 
the antique civilizations. They never found out, 
for no milkmaid or milk-matron was ever found to 
acknowledge that she had ever used any other 
than the narrow-mouthed, rotund-bodied utensil. 

In former days, these were always of earthen- 
ware. Now that they are of tin they are much 
lighter to carry, but it would be asking quite too 
much of the conservative farm people of these 
islands to change the form of vessels from the 
shape used on Duke William's Norman farms. 
Duke William the Conqueror must somehow seem 
to the Channel Islanders a patron-saint of cows. 
At every cattle show, and in every list of prizes are 



SARK. 185 

Duke, Duke William, Duke of Normandie, Duke 
Rollo, The Conqueror, Duchess, Duchess Matilda, 
La Duchesse Mathilde, La Normandie, La Du- 
chesse Galla, together with Dukes Henry, John, 
and Stephen, and their feminine forms galore. 

" Voulez-vous me permettre de faire votre por- 
trait, madame ? " asked Mrs. Dove, swinging the 
kodak into view. The milk-matron evidently 
knew the use of the black box, for she instantly 
placed herself in one of the usual stark, staring posi- 
tions. But when the kodaker sought a more favor- 
able point of view, in the interests of the picturesque 
as the picturesque is understood beyond the cir- 
cumference of Sark, the milk-matron demurred. 

" Comme 9a vous ne verrez point ma physio- 
nomie." 

" Physionomie," they laughed in each other's 
sleeves ; " has n't that a fine insular flavor? Were 
she at home in modern French how much more 
easy to say ^ figure.' " 

The milk-matron was gathered into the black 
box, a very tit-bit of foreign picturesqueness, and 
was pleased to receive the London price of a quart 
of milk. 

Next, a shifty group of shock-headed, half-naked 
urchins were snapshotted, tumbling in and out of a 
row of picturesque cottages while gossiping mothers 
plied knitting-needles in companies of two and 
three. Knitting was formerly the one great in- 
dustry of the Channel Islands for both men and 
women. The Guernsey and Jersey jackets known 
all the world over were once all of domestic knit- 
ting. In those days not only women incessantly 
plied their needles, but their husbands and sons 
were rarely without them. Fishermen knitted be- 



1 86 HIRED FURNISHED. 

tvveen the setting and drawing of nets, knitted 
even with a Hne in hand ; sailors took knitting to 
sea for their watch off or on. Nowadays all 
women knit, but no longer for exportation, and the 
men do not knit at all. 

" Wonder if they still eat gooseberry soup," said 
one of the Doves. 

In the seventeenth century somebody wrote to 
London from Sark of the " generous belly timber 
to be found here, very pleasant to the gusto, so 
that an epicure would think his pallat in Paradice 
if he might but always gormandice on such deli- 
tious ambrosia." The three staple articles were 
fish, fowl, and rabbits ; of the two first many varie- 
ties. To Mrs. Dove's disgust this " belly timber 
of Paradice " included not a fruit or a vegetable 
save such as were made into a certain " extraor- 
dinary and most excellent pottage made of milk, 
bacon, coleworts, mackerel, and gooseberries, 
boyled together all to pieces, which our mode is to 
eat, not with the ceremony of a spoon, but the more 
courtly way of a great piece of bread furiously 
flying between your mouth and the kettle." 

At five o'clock, tea at the Victoria, whence cer- 
tain Guernsey excursionists had not budged since 
the morning arrival. Then down to the Commerce 
amid the same foreign picturesqueness of the morn- 
ing, the darting boats carrying passengers to two 
steamers, the confusion of languages, with shouts 
as one and another of the bank-holidayists lost 
his feeble balance and almost fell into the gloomy 
water. The Budget-debaters of the morning were 
separated, probably forever, one taking passage on 
the larger boat to Guernsey and thence to England 
or France, the other, he who had earlier asked the 



SARK. 187 

Doves where he was, apparently left behind. On 
board the Commerce was much bargaining, as 
Jersey people bought lobsters and crabs in which 
Sark abounds, to take home to their own island 
which has none, and where even the fish-market 
is largely supplied from Billingsgate. One week 
the Jersey papers advertised that twenty thousand 
oysters would be sold for a song in Jersey's Satur- 
day market. They sold for four cents a dozen be- 
cause England would have none of them at any 
price, hearing that they were fattened where 
rivers emptied sewage into the sea and thus 
they were breeders of typhoid. One week thirty 
thousand were to come, for not yet had Jersey 
caught the alarm. They never came, but went 
to a watery grave, being caught and held in a 
fog till even typhoid were pleasant compared with 
them. 

As the Commerce lazily got up steam and 
lazily jogged away from Sark, wild signals were 
seen from a pursuing boat. The chasing and 
signalling was not for the Jersey-bound steamer, 
but the larger one puffing away to Guernsey. 

*' Imbeciles," said a Jerseyman, " I never went 
on an excursion to Sark in my life that somebody 
was not left behind. That couple have been 
spooning on a hotel piazza all day. They shall 
have to hire a boat or wait for the regular steamer 
on Saturday." 

The Commerce crawled ; the sea was gray, the 
air bitterly cold. Everybody was silent. Even the 
steward, fidgeting about with a brown teapot, 
smiled no more. 

" How pleasant to be with our friend the Budget 
debater, under a warm hedge on Sark," chattered 



I 88 HIRED FURNISHED. 

one of them to the other. " Virtue may be its 
own reward, but so also is unvirtue." 

It was not yet dark when they reached Jersey, 
for twilight is long in these latitudes, even though 
figs, oranges, and lemons ripen in sheltered spots 
in the open air. Just before them, as they disem- 
barked, marched their friend the Budget debater, 
as sober as a judge, having comfortably slept off 
his bank- holiday in the warm cabin while sobriety 
chattered its teeth and curved its spines above. 

Cold, tired, hungry, one half that dovely pair 
strode sternly up St. Helier's slope, the other half 
feebly wabbled behind. The Dove-cote turned 
upon them but a chill white face with two blank 
eyes, and a shut mouth of bilious green. No sign 
of welcome, no hint even of Hfe was about the 
sulky-visaged thing. They put the misfit key 
into the misfit lock, with gloomy realization that 
even as the most jocund youth must go out in 
shadows of age, so a glorious bank-holiday may 
have the most cheerless of evenings. 

Behold ! Martin smiled welcome with her 
cups of tea to cheer, and also to inebriate very 
much more than the noontide claret. The tiny 
dining-room was balmy with comfort ; a dinner for 
such gods as like steak, mashed potatoes, salad, 
with cider, cake, pears, and doughnuts, exhaled 
an intoxicating aroma. 

Then they rejoiced that they were born to go 
bank-holidaying upon Cerq, for seventy-five cents 
apiece the round trip, and sixpence apiece for 
their Victorian tea. 

And behold, wise Mrs. Dove did not even say, 
" I told you so ! " 

She waited for some future occasion. 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 1 89 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 

" Only ninety minutes." 

" Yet no/' said Mrs. Dove, meditatively, " let 
us leave it, a land in which no man dwells ; a 
phantom country echoing mystic music of the 
spheres ; a cloud vision stirring the passion of 
our desire. Let us leave it, the haunting of the 
horizon in whose inmost mystery our fiery chariot 
swings." 

Mrs. Dove seemed to take for granted that 
their translation would require but one sweet 
chariot swinging low. 

" Bless my soul ! " exclaimed the other Dove. 
*' Have n't you lived years in France and rowed 
no end of cheating trades-people and lazy ser- 
vants? Have n't I heard you say scores of times 
that you 'd rather be whipped than go into a Nor- 
man market and jabber ten minutes over every 
potato you bought, rather than pay the ' hors nous ' 
price those market people demand of you? 
Where, for instance, was collected your famous 
gallery of Roman Pontiffs?" 

Those Pontiffs ! Well that malicious Dove knew 
what a sore point that subject was. 

One day Mrs. Dove had gone into the Bon 
Marche with only gold in her purse, one piece of 
which was changed at her first visit to a caisse. 
At her second visit to a caisse a silver piece of 



1 90 HIRED FURNISHED. 

fifty centimes was cast back at her as a Roman 
coin. 

Now I'Am^ricaine was entirely aware that these 
papal coins were no longer of any value in France. 
She had intercepted and circumvented very many 
attempts to '^ do " her with them as a foreigner. 
She was equally well aware now that that portrait 
Pius IX. had been given her in part exchange 
for her gold, since she came into the Bon March^. 
Naturally she was indignant. She made her ex- 
planation, which was curtly dismissed. Then she 
shut her teeth, and vowed to rid herself of that 
papal portrait before she left the place. She pro- 
ceeded to make various small purchases to be 
paid in small coin, always including among them 
Pius IX. At every caisse that fat, smirking pope 
was cast back at her. More and more angry she 
grew, till ready to cry aloud, " He may be worth- 
less, but he's the Head of your Church ! " only 
that then she knew her despised Ninth Pius would 
never leave her heretic porte-monnaie. 

Half a score of times at least she bought some 
unconsidered trifle, for the sake, and only that, 
of hiding her puffy-cheeked Head of the Churcli 
with more valid silver, and offering it at a caisse. 

Alas ! The Bon Marche was too sharp for 
Yankee sharpness. Finally she gave up the 
struggle in despair and went home, offering her 
pope to the omnibus conductor on the way, only 
once more to have it contemptuously flung back 
at her. Arrived at home she told her story of 
wrong, opening her porte-monnaie as she told. 

Behold, she had three Heads of the Church ! 

" Not the honorable Bon Marche itself," her 
companion answered her indignation, *' but those 



A LITTLE DASH LA' TO FRANCE. IQI 

rascally caissiers working off upon ' kors nous ' all 
their own store and all the store of their friends, 
of worthless Roman Pontiffs." 

" Yes," said Mrs. Dove, dreamily, " I remember 
my Pontiffs, which disappeared from my purse, 
heaven only knows how, unless I paid them out 
in England for sixpences, and thus unconsciously 
made two cents on each pope. Also I remember 
the day we wandered into a remote country 
churchyard and sat in the shadow of a thousand- 
year-old-Norman church, listening to that mel- 
ancholy sweet sighing of weeds and grass which 
we fancied the echo of plaints from the graves 
they covered. It was an over-crowded church- 
yard, now deserted by the newly dead. We sat in 
the cool shadow of the grim church and wondered 
if into its substance had entered any essence of 
the ten centuries of mourning it had coldly wit- 
nessed, where the dead have been buried over 
and over again in the same mould. Of all those 
graves only two were not weedy and neglected. 
Those two were well-rounded, as if they covered 
forms still shapely, and they were brilliant with 
flowers as fresh as if watered every dawn and 
evening, as we afterwards knew they were. These 
graves were far apart from each other, they were 
not of the same family. While we sat there watch- 
ing the lengthening shadows creep slowly from the 
woman's grave to the man's, a bent and hobbling 
old creature, crippled with rheumatism, came first 
to one grave, then the other, plucking away fallen 
petals, straightening wind-bowed blossoms, and re- 
freshing them with water from his garden can. We 
watched the tenderness with which he cared for 
both graves equally, and we wondered in whispers 



192 HIRED FURNISHED. 

what to him could have been the two, evidently 
not related, — the man dead twenty-five years ago 
at thirty years of age, the woman twenty years ago 
at twenty-five. 

^^^ Parbleu /'laughed Mademoiselle Jeanne when 
we told her of our wonderings. ' You 've seen 
old Dufour the gardener. Years ago, before I 
remember, he was the fia7ice of Elise Petit. It 
was told that she did not wish to marry, and it is 
known that for one reason and another the mar- 
riage was continually put off. They had been 
playmates from childhood and betrothed soon after 
their first communion, which was made together. 
Why Elise seemed always averse to marriage, no- 
body knew. Suddenly the young cure of the 
village died and was buried in one of those flower- 
roofed graves that you saw to-day. From the 
hour the clods covered him Elise became mel- 
ancholy mad. She spoke no more to anybody 
save in faint murmurs to her lost Edouard. Sum- 
mer and winter she spent hours by his grave, 
planting it with flowers, tending them, and singing 
crazy lullabies as if to an infant in its cradle. 
Everybody wondered where she procured such 
rare and expensive flowers, and why with only her 
crazy care they flourished so beautifully ; for even 
had she been trusted with money such hot-house 
flowers were nowhere in market. One evening, 
five years after the young man's death, she was 
found dead on his grave by Jacques Dufour, head 
gardener at the Chateau, the man who had always 
loved her, and who had watched over her during her 
brain-turned years. He has never married, and 
is n't it line drolc de chose that ever since he has 
taken care of both graves? We are wondering if 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 193 

he will leave his money for somebody else to keep 
his rival's grave blooming, or if three more graves 
will soon grow tangled and weedy before they sink 
away into the common mould.' 

" Is n't that better to remember, mon cher, than 
my swollen pope's-jowls ? " continued Mrs. Dove. 
" Is France not a. dream of poetry without a Bon 
Marche, where love is as long as life? Don't 
tell me — " 

" I won't ! " said he. 

France might have been ten thousand miles 
away for all they could see of it the gray misty 
morning that on St. Helier's pier they changed 
English gold into enough French money to last 
for four days. Yet they seemed already in 
France, a commonplace semi-sordid France, with- 
out hauntings or music, as they waited for the 
httle steamer's bell to ring all aboard. For more 
French than English was spoken about them, 
several of the intending passengers wore the 
violently checked ulsters in which Frenchmen 
consider themselves at the very apex of the Eng- 
lish fashion, there was continual jabber of francs 
and centimes, although none of pope's-heads. 
Three quarters of the passengers were French, 
or else Jerseymen who seemed so French one 
could not detect the difference; and those 
Frenchmen were largely of the bagman or ^om- 
mis-voyageur type from provincial cities. The 
few English were avant conreurs of the tourist 
season, with noses already in the air, giving 
their countenances the expression of contempt 
for everything un-English so familiar on the 
Continent. 



194 HIRED FURNISHED. 

A brisk little spin, peacock-blue banks of cloud, 
gray-green shores, then France la belle. 

It were difficult to weave any imaginative mists 
about ugly Granville, and their landing in the very 
arms of the familar Httle douaniers with big mous- 
taches and little use for soap, who never even 
peeped into their large kodak, though it might 
easily be imitation and brimful of the tea of which 
every travelling Englishwoman is suspected. Mrs. 
Dove even suggested that the type of douanier 
had grown smaller, rustier, duskier, dustier, and 
less inquisitive, than at the forty-two-or-so other 
times of their landing at France and in their arms. 

" The Jersey boats come in too often to cause 
any excitement," he explained the slight inquisi- 
tiveness. " They know a smuggler by instinct." 

The train was evidently kept in waiting for the 
arrival of their boat and the wise omnibus there- 
fore did not " fash " itself because of the im- 
patience of Messieurs les voyageiirs. But the 
railway employes were markedly impatient, and 
shrieked, " Dspechez-vous, depechez-voiis,^'' from the 
station, till Mrs. Dove yearned to use choice 
French and answer back, '"' Fermez vos boiiches,^^ 
which would not have been choice French after all. 
In the breathless excitement of bringing tickets 
to the incessant goading of " Depechez-voiis, mes- 
sieurs, depechez-vous^^ a large part of the company 
lost their heads and for a moment rushed wildly 
about in a salle d' atte^ite., hke mice in a cage, 
seeking and not finding the exit upon the rail- 
way platform. 

" Eh bie?t, messieurs ! have you come to France 
to amuse yourselves comme <;a ? " screamed the 
sarcastic ticket collector. 



I 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 1 95 

In the train bearing them on to Avranches, 
whence they would later depart for Mont Saint- 
Michel, they enjoyed the society of a Britisher, 
travelling with two Jersey men. He had absorbed 
two English breakfasts that morning before the 
steamer left St. Helier's at eleven, knowing he 
should breakfast no more till he returned to 
British civilization ; and he not only recounted 
with gusto the items of those breakfasts (both 
including bacon), but traced an imaginary menu 
for breakfasts for the future, when he should 
escape the barbarism of France. He would not 
condescend to flatter these Frenchmen by speak- 
ing their lingo, not he. The English language 
was good enough for any man ; for any man who 
could not understand it, it was too good. So he 
talked of Mount Saint Michael, of Avranches to 
rhyme with cattle ranches. Saint-Malo was Saint 
Maylow, Dynan for Dinan, and so on. He would 
never stop in France more than a week at a time ; 
ketch him stopping longer than he could help 
where you couldn't get beer on draught, nor a 
boiled pertater ; but he had run cigars enough to 
last him through, and would his friends take a 
dozen or so? Whereupon he unloaded half a 
dozen packages from various places about his 
ponderous person. 

'* They know a smuggler by instinct," remarked 
Mrs. Dove. 

It did not take the Doves long to agree, as they 
trundled through that corner of Normandy, that 
France was indeed la belle. Nowhere in all the 
world of their memories, it seemed to them, was 
ever anything so beautiful as the color of the 
landscape over which artists- rave ; and well they 



196 HIRED FURNISHED. 

may. Nowhere else were the slopes and valleys, 
the little hills and meadows, of that exquisite 
sheeny blue-green (if coarse words may thus 
express it) that suggests peacock hues ethereal- 
ized by an almost impalpable veil of silver-gray. 
Other landscape colors seem shockingly crude 
compared with the subtle gray-greens of France. 
America's green is cheaply glassy ; England's yel- 
lowish, as if grown for beef and butter ; Italy is 
a mighty chromo screaming to be copied ; even 
dear little Jersey suggests potato-green. The 
landscape in France allures, beguiles, intoxicates, 
— a very Circe, to make artists drunk with desire 
only to realize what mere swine they are when 
they attempt to paint it. 

Against this prismatic background what marvel- 
lous orchards, every petal an illumined opal ; every 
orchard a glimpse of Eden. The solemnity of 
fortress-like churches, the huddled red roofs of 
quaint hamlets, the deep eaves and russet thatch 
of antique farm-houses and cottages, thrilled the 
Doves with realization of an old world picturesque- 
ness such as is sadly trampled out beneath the 
energetic tread of the Anglo Saxon race to which 
they belong (although not of choice, since no 
choice was ever offered them where or of whom 
to be born. " Would have made no difference if it 
had," they comforted their dolefulness ; " we should 
probably have chosen milk rather than beauty "). 

As the train unrolled this poetic panorama before 
their eyes, " Come, Love,"' said the foolish Dove ; 
"let us leave the train at the next station; let us 
buy blouses, and quilted petticoats a mile round 
the hips ; let us buy caps and sabots ; let us forget 
our beloved libraries, theatres, and ice-creams, 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 19/ 

and dwell forevermore in French orchards under 
russet thatch." 

" My yearnings are not infinite for sour cider, 
cabbage soup, ventripotence^ and rheumatism," 
answered the wise Dove. 

He had reason. 

In their compartment three Breton peasant 
women flashed caps of snowiest muslin. They 
were quaint stiff caps with immensely broad bands, 
which looked as if designed to tie in bows under 
the chin. If such were the original design, cen- 
turies of contrary habit have thwarted it. Now 
those bands are looped up and fastened each side 
the cap in fashion to give the butterfly appearance 
which was not a novelty to the Doves, inasmuch as 
it is frequent in the street of Jersey, where Breton 
nurses are much esteemed, and many a Breton 
household established. 

The three butterflies floated, nodded, beckoned, 
tossed, and danced, as if the heads they belonged 
to were sun-warmed flowers ; and the jabber was 
incessant of Jean and Jeanne, of Desire and De- 
siree, of Jules and Juliette, of their rheumatisms, 
their douleiirs of teeth and toes, of inside and out, 
upside and down, of body and members, tiU it 
would seem there could be no health whatever 
in the exquisite blue-gray-greenness to which they 
belonged. 

" Low diet begets rheumatism ; damp thatch 
abets it," they agreed. 

At Avranches they left their hand luggage a la 
consigne and climbed the aerial path up the hill 
which circumvents the winding and long carriage- 
road to town. Before they should wander at way- 
ward will through the silent streets, gazing in at 



198 HIRED FURNISHED. 

shop-windows like blancs bees, discussing notices 
of houses to let (none furnished), and hunting up 
storied spots, they must even eat ; for men must eat 
though they work, and eat women must though 
they weep, else would there be no hiring-furnished 
in far foreign lands, with delicious dashes into 
lands even more far and foreign. 

"Byron called his wife ^gormandizing beast,'" 
remarked the lady, meditatively. 

" Byron ? What has fat Byron to do with our 
little dash into France? Ah, yes, I remember, it 
was when she ate cutlets ; they are good in 
France." 

" Shall it be dejeuner or dinner ? " they com- 
muned as they paused outside a portal, far enough 
away from it not to be seized by some officious 
gargon and dragged in willy-nilly. It was a natural 
question at half-past three in the afternoon, and 
nothing eaten since breakfast in the Jersey Dove- 
cote. 

" Dinner ! " answered enthusiastic chorus. 

So they dined, at three francs and a half a head 
(or rather mouth), and enjoyed, as only pleasure- 
catchers, not mere pleasure-seekers, can, their 
cutlet and salad, fried potatoes, sweet biscuits, and 
Pont L'Eveque, with cider compris^ and coffee 
following. 

But when they came out the lady growled 
ominously. 

*' Did you notice," she grumbled, "that the 
water in which yesterday's cabbage was boiled cost 
us four francs a litre ; more than a bottle of the 
best Bordeaux? " 

"What do you mean?" 

" Did n't you see ? We were going to be so 



. A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 199 

very clever, and not to be done while dashing. 
Already we are ' done. ' We have had only the 
regular two-franc-and-a-half dejeuner., charged 
three francs and a half because we asked to dine, 
and the half-pint apiece of cabbage-water made it 
into a dinner." 

She took out a tiny book and upon the stone 
where once an English sovereign knelt to be 
cleansed from the curse of excommunication, she 
memmed, " JVr cd dr F we dr en cd ; " which is to 
say, " Never command a dinner in France where 
a de'jeimer can be commanded." 

If Avranches, dull, grass-grown, empty Avranches, 
once a great intellectual centre where Lefranc had 
a renowned school in the eleventh century, had no 
other claim to respect, its glorious position and 
more glorious views would make it never-to-be- 
forgotten. One view from the terrace of the 
pubHc garden is said to be the finest in France ; 
which saying the Doves took the Hberty to doubt, 
having intimately known Auvergne and seen all 
that lies between the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the 
Atlantic. But it was a magnificent view of wide, 
rolling distance seen from a height, a manner of 
view by many considered finer than up-looking to 
stupendous heights. 

The Americans seated themselves upon garden 
seats before a fine prospect of blank wall to dis- 
cuss whether such difference of admiring was not 
human littleness and conceit preferring everything 
below its own level, as contrasted with the humility 
of a more inspired and illumined imagination lift- 
ing up its eyes to the eternal hills and to the glory 
of the heavens, and rejoicing because of spirits 
that soar though bodies are chained. 



200 HIRED FURNISHED. 

The view is of a vast plain far below, beginning 
with a sheer descent from the rampart-terrace. 
On two sides are river valleys, shimmering, dapphng, 
as the clouds float over them, and deeply dimpled 
with thickets of trees. Directly in the centre, far 
away beyond wheat land and meadows, is a 
gUmpse of sparkling sea with the faint far hills of 
Brittany behind the distant bay, where rises what 
seems a magic castle, at any moment to be rapt 
into the glory of the sky or to vanish into the glory 
of the sea, even while mortal gaze strives to 
encompass its fairy picturesqueness. 

It seems a pinnacle of cloud upon a cloud 
pinnacle ; in the sunshine its spires become melt- 
ing frost tipped with fire ; when shadow or dim- 
ness falls upon it it becomes a reft and splintered 
cloud, and in reality is the fortress-monastery of 
countless pilgrimages and as many fights and 
forays, Mont Saint-Michel. 

Here in Avranches-of-the-View, as the Ameri- 
cans called it, is a small archway erected in the 
botanic garden, on which a brass plate gives a hint 
of one of the slow, creeping tragedies with which 
nature, red of tooth and claw, amuses its infinite 
leisure. The inscription states that this is all that 
is left of a church of the eleventh century. Else- 
where one learns that the church itself and its 
village stood, not in Avranches, but upon distant 
sands, which in time became quicksands and 
sucked the church and village down. 

Very near, still with the marvellous view before 
it, is the church step upon which Henry Second 
knelt before the Pope's legate in humiliation for 
the murder of Thomas-a-Becket. On a brass 
plate on an ancient broken column is inscribed 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 201 

the story that Henry Second, King of England 
and Duke of Normandy, received on his knees the 
Apostolic absolution on Sunday, 2 2d May, 11 72. 
A little beyond is a small heap of stones, a stone 
coffin, and the figure of a dog, a wheelbarrow- load 
perhaps in all, and all that remains of the grand 
cathedral into which a king was not permitted to 
enter till he had done bitter penance, and which 
once reared its lofty walls to be seen from Mont 
Saint-Michel as a magic vision of pinnacles and 
spires of frost and gold among the clouds. 

" Providing it was not thus seen by a guide- 
book maker," sniffed a Dove. "Just hear this," 
reading from a book: "'To the left are Mont 
Saint-Michel and the island of Tombelaine, too 
distant to be imposing^ " 

"Hadn't the man an opera glass?" laughed 
the other one. 

In the gathering dusk the dashers arrived by 
train at Pontorson and into the very midst of the 
infernal clamor at the station known to all arrivals 
there. How many those howling madmen were, 
they never knew ; they seemed an innumerable 
multitude, those foaming, shouting charioteers 
raging about two or three dazed foreigners inno- 
cently wishing to reach Mont Saint- Michel just 
round the circle of the bay. The Doves were 
deafened by them, and for a time found not a 
word to answer, although one of them spoke 
French as if it were his mother tongue, and they 
were irritated almost to the extent of refusing all 
and every offer of conveyance and of starting to 
make the journey on foot. 

Ten francs was the lowest price at which any- 
body could drive anybody over the quicksands at 



202 HIRED FURNISHED. 

this time of night when all the regular omnibuses 
had done running and the return journey must be 
made in the dark. " Ten francs, and all the saints 
in heaven knew it was none too much, and if 
madame says she will walk, by the horns of the 
devil she knows not the dangers of the sables- 
moiivants.'''' 

"They think we are greenhorns," they laughed 
in each other's sleeves. *' They fancy we have 
been reading-up, and are full to the brim of 
mediaeval romances of these engulfing quicksands, 
such as " La Fee des Greves " and the like. They 
fool themselves that we don't know all about that 
fine new causeway, level and smooth across the 
quicksands." 

" Let us leave it," he continued chantingly. 
" Let us leave it, a land in which no man dwells, a 
phantom country stirring the passion of our desire 
for a fiery chariot — " 

" Tais-foi,''^ remarked his companion. 

The clamor continued ; it even increased when 
one charioteer was discovered to be whispering 
*' nine francs " in Mr. Dove's ear. Nine, verily 
it was eight, seven, six. Still the strangers refused, 
knowing that a franc and a quarter was the day- 
time price. 

" Then five francs for monsieur and madame, 
all the two." 

The besieged were about to accept this amazing 
offer when a fresh charioteer appeared on the 
scene from another shouting group. 

" Four francs for monsieur and madame, all the 
two," he shouted in the manner of a Dutch auction, 
and to the manifest wrath of the others, at which 
he wickedly laughed. 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 203 

As monsieur and madame, somewhat out of 
breath, clambered into the rough covered-vehicle, 
their charioteer confided to them that he had 
caught another A?iglais for five francs, and that was 
why he could underbid all the others. This be- 
cozened Anglais thus paid for himself alone one 
franc more than the Doves paid for " all the two," 
even though one of the howling charioteers had 
aired his English by informing them that they were 
"two mans ; two mans pays more as one mans." 

How many scores of times descriptions have 
been written of the arrival at the Mount, the meet- 
ing with handsome Madame Poulard, the warming 
by the kitchen fire, then the ascent of those inter- 
minable stairs to the Spartan plain chambers in la 
Maison rouge far up the rock. Nothing else was 
different in the arrival of these dashers. There 
was the weirdly picturesque swinging of Japanese 
lanterns to meet them as two rival hotels contended 
for their patronage. But nobody goes elsewhere 
than to the original Poulard's, " Poulard aine^'' if it 
can be helped, not only because Madame Poulard 
is a renowned beauty as well as a renowned 
omelet-thrower, but because all one's acquaint- 
ances have always descended there (descended up 
two hundred and ten stairs), and have warned one 
to *' descend " nowhere else. It must be gall and 
wormwood to the widow of the other Poulard, 
" Fou\a.rd j'eune," who keeps up the title, to realize 
every day of her life that though her omelets are 
equally good, their secret learned from the same 
original Madame Poulard of a generation ago, she 
receives only the overflow from her brother-in- 
law's hostelry. Yet all the same her emissaries 
come out upon the arrival of every omnibus at 



204 HIRED FURNISHED. 

night with also Japanese lanterns swinging and 
swaying like tropical birds of strange plumage. 
Madame Poulard yV?/;/^ thinks her omelets better 
than those of her sister-in-law, whose omelets are 
moist while hers are as dry as omelets should be, 
n^est-ce pas ? 

Madame Poulard atne met the Doves with a 
cooing tenderness, as if she had waited all her life 
long for just this happy moment. " Madame has 
cold to the feet, of it I am sure ; let her approach 
herself to the fire before she mounts to her 
chamber." 

Wood is thrown upon the low embers of the 
deep kitchen fireplace, flames leap flickeringly 
up, and Mrs. Dove is warmed clear through by 
so home-like a greeting, without an arriere pensee 
of dejeu7ier, two and a half francs ; dinner, three 
francs ; room, three francs ; morning coffee and 
rolls, one franc. 

Mrs. Dove tells Madame Poulard that she has 
brought with her many compliments from Madame 
Say, who, she will remember, remained with her 
two weeks last summer. 

Of course madame remembers ; she is enchanted 
to have news of dear Madame Say ; she is en- 
chanted to know that this dear Madame Say has 
not forgotten how much she was contented at the 
Mount the summer passed, — and this charming 
lady, carries she herself very well in London? 

"Paris," corrected Mrs. Dove. 

" Ah, otii, Paris : elle avait toujours Fair tres 
parisien. One would say her truly parisienne, 
n'est-ce pas?" 

" Why not ? " wondered Mrs. Dove, " since she 
is Parisienne." 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 205 

"Blarney," laughed Mr. Dove, as they mounted 
endless stairs, " she had no idea whatever of whom 
you were speaking. It was not here at all that 
Madame Say wished to be remembered, but at 
Dinan." 

Mrs. Dove wondered if this cooing was not 
as much as the omelets in the fame of Poulard 
aine. For during every de'jeuner and dinner 
during their stay this same cooing came over her 
shoulder : " Dear madame, just one little morsel 
more. Dear madame, you eat nothing. Dear 
madame, this is the last plat ; eat then of it a little 
more, dear madame." 

They were lodged among the clouds, in chambers 
like convent cells ; far, immensely far below, the vil- 
lage lived, in narrow, tortuous ways. One scarcely 
thinks of a village and living people on that great 
rock in the sea, crowned by a fortress-monastery 
which in its turn is surmounted by a church brist- 
ling with pinnacles. Yet the village is very quaint? 
and its people are picturesque, with wind-blown 
faces and storm-cracked voices, as they chatter 
from dusky doorway to dusky doorway, up and 
down the sides of the steep rock. Mrs. Dove 
had many chances to talk with them, for like most 
women she had no sense whatever of topography 
and the lay of the land, and was much given to 
squaring circles, or trying to. The rock is thridded 
with alleys winding in and out among sculptured 
walls, and walls rough-hewn, and without any 
mark, so the lady thought, to distinguish one from 
the other. From Sunday morning to Sunday 
night after their Saturday night arrival, she wan- 
dered in a complete maze whenever she wandered 
alone, and was more often lost and more often 



206 HIRED FURNISHED. 

obliged to ask her way on that rock only three 
thousand yards in circumference at the base, than 
ever she was lost any one day in all of wide 
America. 

They "did" all the architectural, historical, and 
legendary things, a la dash, for on Tuesday they 
must be back to their books and work in the Dove- 
cote. They did the regulation rounds with a 
young guide, son of the regular cicerone, who 
referred with sly frequency to his notes, and 
discouraged extraneous questions. Cloisters, dun- 
geons, chapter-rooms, refectories, chapels, guard- 
rooms, salles des chevaliers, crypts, dortoirs, they 
saw them all, no doubt, and were glad to see them 
even if only in such bewildering confusion. 

For half a loaf is better than no bread, and it is 
a peculiarity with these Doves that the half they 
get is always larger than the half they are obliged 
to leave. Besides the usual sights, they found 
others un-noted by guide-books and tourists. In 
a scrap of a graveyard, with graves hanging to the 
side of the rock like nests of mason bees, they 
found the grave of a young English girl drowned 
here some years ago while touring with her parents. 
The sight saddened them as they pictured the 
smitten family, leaving their dead on this far and 
rough rock, in an ugly enclosure without beauty of 
tree or flower, with no blossom or branch ever laid 
by loving hands upon her grave, and only now 
and then a loitering stranger to stand there a 
moment and wonder why a heretic foreigner was 
admitted to consecrated ground. Consecrated 
ground, indeed, that thin slant of soil over a crev- 
ice in a rock. One shudders to realize the farce 
of consecration of that tilting scrap of earth with 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 20/ 

an all consuming maw just beneath it. One 
shudders in realizing what that maw must contain. 
Generations upon generations have fed it for al- 
most a thousand years, generations of dust once 
vital, and still it is not filled. How many times it 
has swallowed the entire village, grandsire, sire, 
and son, — who can tell? The rock must hold 
some hmidreds of people, fishers and their famihes, 
relic-vendors, guides, guards, penny-grocers, hotel 
and cafe keepers, and their domestic and business 
entourage. All must die, and evidently all must 
go up to that horrible burial-place on men's 
shoulders, hustled up the same steps in the rock 
their feet have carelessly climbed so many times. 
It is almost strange to see the villagers indifferent 
to the monster who will devour them as it de- 
voured their forefathers. It is strange to see 
women nursing babes on the steps of darksome 
interiors without weeping and groaning that half 
way up the Mount the hungry monster lies in wait 
for the babe as well as all its kindred. It seems 
strange that villagers are born, live, and die within 
arm's length of the dreadful maw, and never dream 
of running away from it even into the sea. Surely 
it must be a tragedy with alleviations when a Mont 
Saint-Michel fisherman's body is never recovered 
from the deep. 

The Mount is really much more interested in 
brides than in this great yawning grave. Brides 
come continually from miles upon miles away with 
gay wedding parties, much noise and laughter. 
Madame Poulard always keeps large wedding- 
cakes on hand, hymeneally frosted and decorated 
by the confectioner, who furnishes her by the 
wholesale. Richard the Good of Normandy and 



208 HIRED FURNISHED. 

his bride Judith of Brittany had no such cake for 
their wedding feast, here on the Mount, nine hun- 
dred years ago. The inquisitive one of the Doves 
would have Hked very much to know what they 
did have and where they had it, on this dividing 
rock upon which and for which so much Norman 
and Breton blood had been spilt. It must have 
been a coarse flesh feast, with greasy beards 
and paws, and perhaps Judith received a few 
blows just to teach her what to expect. Brides 
wore crimson when Judith was married to the 
monk-governed and monk-flattered but harsh 
Richard in the tenth century, white being the 
widow's color. Mrs. Dove pictured this Breton 
bride in her two long and loose-fitting tunics, her 
hair parted in the middle of her head and much 
concealed under the long veil all women must wear 
or be refused the Communion by the priests. 
Whether she was a happy bride or not seemed 
to Mrs. Dove to be of very little consequence, for 
her married days were short, and she never wore 
the widow's white. It was in honor of his mar- 
riage here that Richard the Good built the second 
church upon the rock. Judith was a bride long 
before a Norman duke would conquer wild Eng- 
land across the Channel ; her daughter would 
be Queen Emma of England, yet the day of her 
bridal her stockingless condition would put her 
utterly to shame in the eyes of the white-muslined 
and orange-flowered brides of these later days on 
the Mount. Norman and Breton brides bring 
money to the village ; they buy souvenirs of the 
occasion ; the elders of the party sit about in differ- 
ent caf^s, while the younger romp up and down, 
in and out of all the queer angles and surprising 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 209 

recesses and corners of this most inconceivable 
village. The Mount enters into bridal calculations 
for miles of both Normandy and Brittany, and 
the wedding breakfast or dinner, albeit only the 
usual one provided by Madame Poulard, with one 
of her Paris cakes added, is very often the most 
luxurious repast the bride ever saw, or will ever 
see. It seems too bad, too, for she is generally 
so shy or so flustered, or else so intent upon her 
new matronly dignity, that she rarely eats more 
than a bird's allowance, although her spouse 
''tucks in" with might and main, and everybody 
cries shame upon her. Probably for years to 
come, in the kitchen back of the shop, as she and 
her husband drink sour cider and eat rags of beef 
from the soup, they will talk of the omelet, the 
salmon, the chickens, the golden potatoes, the 
salads, and all the cakes and sweets of their wed- 
ding-day at the Mount, and the wife will almost 
shed tears that one may not be a bride and have 
a glorious hunger at the same time. 

During eight months of the year. Poulard aine's 
is always full, and the dishes clatter incessantly. 
Wherever upon that steeply towering Mount one 
may be, it is always felt that the centre of life, the 
focal point of everything real, of all things not of 
the dreamy past or the imaginative present, is 
Foulard ames, the salle-a-maiiger and its satellite 
cuisine. Everything must fit in with the sacred 
hours of dejeuner and dinner in the long, white- 
walled salle-a-manger. Every plan of the day is sub- 
ject to those two triumphant ceremonies. In fact, 
Madame Poulard is a magnificent rival to the mar- 
vellous architecture and history of the Mount upon 
which monks and kings have striven for victory, 

14 



2IO HIRED FURNISHED. 

and an archangel looked down for ages upon 
deeds of popes and princes. Many a colossally 
paunched Frenchman, swollen with his two bottles 
of wine a day and unlimited cider, comes to " The 
Omelet " to pass a Sunday, and never cHmbs 
higher, but sits all day long in a dusky cafe wait- 
ing for the next meal. The fame of Madame 
Poulard's providing has spread far and wide. Fat 
priests (they all were fat that day of the Doves, 
perhaps the lean ones had climbed up higher) 
come now, not as pilgrims came once with crusts 
in their sacks, but with ruddy gills and wandering 
eyes to " swell wisibly before one's very eyes," at 
Madame Poulard's table. Every day of her life 
Madame Poulard throws those enormous ome- 
lets ; sometimes, she says, using sixty dozens of 
eggs a day. These omelets are the fame of the 
house, of the Mount, made so a generation ago, 
by Madame Poulard's mother-in-law. The au- 
berge is named '' Omelet," a la renomuiee de 
r Omelette ; at the machicolated entrance gate 
of the village '■^ La Fameiise Omelette,'^ stares 
straight from the walls at all arrivals. 

Years ago, when fewer people came to the 
Mount than now, the original Madame Poulard 
had very little to offer her guests in the way of 
food. Eggs, to be sure, were always to be had 
and could be kept on hand ; an omelet could 
be tossed up in two minutes, even after her 
people were at table. Naturally also, in those 
days before the present easy and safe causeway 
was ever imagined, everybody who reached Mont 
Saint-Michel did it after some peril. There was 
always more or less danger among the ever-shift- 
ing quicksands which have swallowed, so tradi- 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 2 I I 

tion says, many a knight and his charger, more 
than one eloping couple, more than scores of fat 
priests ; so that most travellers made the crossing 
in a state of some excitement. The way was 
long, the wind often rough ; with excitement and 
fatigue everybody arrived at the little inn in a 
state of ravenousness. What then could taste 
better than Madame Poulard's speedy omelets? 
What was a more direct contradiction to the old 
monk who in some dead century wrote " There is 
nothing on the Mount worth frying " ? Every 
pilgrim and stranger who stayed and comforted 
himself with omelets spread their fame abroad till 
the result became the present Madame Poulard's 
sixty dozens of eggs a day. The Doves scarcely 
thought to touch the famous dish themselves, so 
amused were they in watching the expressions of 
the countenances about them as buxom Madame 
Poulard herself carried the renommee round the 
table. Greed, nothing more nor less than glutton- 
ous greed, was upon some men's faces, as the 
large spoon rapidly reduced the golden fleece 
long before it came near them. One Frenchman 
in particular seemed almost to crouch, prepared 
to spring like a panther before the Enghsh lady, 
whose expression was only of curiosity, should 
remove the last spoonful to her own plate. 
Happily for everybody a relay came, then several, 
and the Frenchman's anxious greed changed to 
greedy satisfaction. 

" You may be sure that man always speaks 
of Mont Sainte-Omelette," remarked the elder 
Dove. 

Strange that after all this talk of the golden 
fleece so sought by Jasons (and Medeas) of two 



212 HIRED FURNISHED. 

not to say three countries, the tragic truth remains 
to be told that it is not so very wonderful after 
all ! Wherever a good omelet is made it is just 
as good, for French cooks everywhere have the 
knack of them, in some magical art of beating 
eggs and some magical turn of the wrist that tosses 
them exactly at the magical moment. Thus they, 
as well as the golden fleece of L'Omelette, seem 
always in three layers so to say, or rather a roll 
of the dry fleece wrapped about a middle of hquid 
gold. 

Visitors at L'Omelette have been known upon 
rare occasions to decline la rejiommee I Mrs. 
Dove was one, she having no taste for eggs in 
any form. It would be amusing always to watch 
Madame Poulard upon these rare occasions. 
When I'Americaine declined the chef d''cEiivj'e, 
Madame Poulard did not withdraw the dish, even 
in view of all the watering mouths lower down the 
table. She still held it over the lady's shoulder, 
incredulous that it should be intentionally de- 
clined, quite sure she had misunderstood, or that 
the lady did not quite understand what the blessed 
thing was, thus profanely negatived. When 
finally she could doubt no longer, the dish with 
gentle solemnity was withdrawn, and Madame 
Poulard's brilliant smile faded, till the next sitter 
dipped deeply into the sacred dish, when it pen- 
sively — oh, so pensively ! — dawned again. 

Madame Poulard serves other things, and every- 
thing ciiit a point. Thus she dominates the Mount ; 
she is the Mount, one might say, for from every 
family she draws her servants, — staid women who 
sleep at home ; into every house that has a de- 
cent chamber to spare she introduces her guests ; 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 2 I 3 

of every house to let she takes possession. Thus 
it comes to pass that of the hosts who reach the 
Mount every summer one half gives no thought to 
the fact that some of the most beautiful ecclesi- 
astical and military architecture of the Middle 
Ages towers above it, but only that here is the 
most famous best dinner for the price in all 
France. 

It is entirely an al fresco life, that of the Mount 
in summer. Poulard aine^s bedrooms are bed- 
rooms and nothing more ; one would as soon sit 
in a prison cell. Everybody — that is, everybody 
w^io is not waiting in cafes for the next meal — is 
upon the terraces, or sitting upon low walls gazing 
upon the sea, or wandering through the wondrous 
architecture that towers to the skies. The rock 
is circumscribed, but one easily loses one's self in 
such labyrinthine passages and wanders continu- 
ally far more than of intention. Then when night 
comes and Madame (and Monsieur) Poulard must 
go to rest in their own stuffy little chamber over 
the cafe across the road from L'Omelette, then 
the gay Japanese lanterns are brought out with 
which every one must be lighted to bed. No 
other way could candles be used where beds are 
almost out of doors. Up the soaring external 
stairs, up the village street to chambers in private 
houses, these lanterns sway and swing like footless 
birds of Paradise and of fable. 

The day beginning somewhat chill, the Doves 
passed the little iron tables of the balcony to 
reach the glass house at the end. They thus 
passed also so many half open doors, with glimpses 
of toilets les plus inthnes, that they were quite 
abashed, even though they knew that the open 



2 14 HIRED FURNISHED. 

doors (or long windows) revealed only French 
people who did not care a rap, and that those 
who did or would care were English behind doors 
tiditlv shut. 

In the glass house, sheltered from the wind, 
they expanded in sunshine. Others before them 
had taken coffee on the large circular table, but 
only one person took his at the same time. He 
was a Frenchman, of better than the commis-voy- 
ageiir type in appearance, and of spare habit, as 
va sans dire., else had he taken his coffee in the 
cafe on the earth below, and not here among the 
clouds. He broke his rolls into the bowl of coffee, 
and bent his head almost into it, as if asking a 
benediction upon it. Mr. Dove gazed reverently 
through the clear glass of the walls, out upon the 
radiant expanse, which, far, far below, encircled 
the rock in silver and blue. A sound of rushing 
waters, of winds and roaring tides, suddenly rose 
up from the heart of tranquil space and filled that 
house of crystal. A storm among go thic forests, 
a tempest over a boiling sea seemed to burst 
upon their calm sunniness in one tremendous 
instant. 

" Who would suppose we could hear the sucking 
and swashing of the tide at this height ? " solemnly 
remarked Mr. Dove. Whereupon crimson Mrs. 
Dove bit her lips, but the Frenchman did not raise 
his head. 

Then came the discreet and elderly mere de 
famille who served their cafe, to tell them that 
dejeuner would be at douze heures. 

" Douze heui^es ! " complained the lady. 
*' That 's your fault for making me do all the 
talking." 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 21 5 

" Makijig you ! I like that ! when do I have a 
chance for an edgeways word ? " 

" You must have been making me do it all," 
insisted the lady, " or she never would have said 
douze heures for midi. I 've a mind to tell her 
that you are half a Frenchman." 

"And take my coffee as the tide takes the 
shore?" 

She did not run after the mere de famUle, who 
talked pigeon- French for the benefit of ces 
Anglais. She ceased to wonder at that pigeon- 
French in face of the Anglais at dinner that night, 
who declined Madame Poulard's soft entreaty 
with, " Massy, madame ; je suis rempli jusker le 
cou." 

With Monday morning came a flight to Dol, 
where they visited the cathedral, had dejeuner., 
a delightful drive to the Mont-Dol for a dollar, and 
where they snap-shotted like mad, including the 
famous Menhir, a strange ragged shaft in a field, 
thirty-five feet above ground, with no earthly clue 
to the mystery how it got there and by whom it 
was hewn. They pitied the dumb, lonely thing, 
unable to tell its pre-historic story, unable to taunt 
the modern world with ignorance of all the things 
it knows ; doomed to rear itself aloft in the daily 
companionship of hinds and yokels, with now and 
then a cow meditatively scratching herself, and 
a pig grunting piggish superiority because it can 
grunt, at feet that have stood still while century 
after century has passed on before it, powerless to 
stand still one instant. 

Then came Dinan, much favored by the Eng- 
lish as was evident at table d'hote, where among a 
score of people was not one native of the country. 



2l6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Some had just arrived from Jersey, some were on 
their way there, and the former gave the latter 
advice. 

" You '11 get a breakfast at the Star, an English 
breakfast." 

" That will be a blessing." 

" You must not forget to get a candy shoe " 
{canne de choii). 

" Candy shoe ! whatever is that ? " 

" It 's a cane made of the cabbage stalks, which 
grow several feet high on Jersey. They are very 
tough, and everybody gets a few to carry away." 

" Hope we shall have our rooms swept occa- 
sionally. Have n't been swept here since we 
came." 

" Dassay," said the Enghshman late from Jer- 
sey. " But I always manage that by sluicing my 
room with my bawth. They have to wipe it up 
then." 

" You never know an Englishman not to men- 
tion his ' bawth ' in course of time," remarked the 
Dove whom the other Dove often named " Anglo- 
maniac." " Yet Britons have not always been so 
ostentatiously clean. Did n't nasty old Pepys 
jeer at his wife because after a winter in the dirt 
she washed herself in warm water, and declared 
her intention of thereafter keeping herself very 
clean ? ' I know how long that will last,' jeered 
the vile creature. Then there was that dainty 
bride who became Mistress Alice Thornton dur- 
ing the civil wars. She was of an honorable house 
and lived in luxury. The day after her marriage 
and while yet in her mother's house she became 
dangerously ill. When she recovered she wrote, 
^ I cannot conjecture the cause of the fit, unless 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 21/ 

it was washing my feet at that time of the year.' 
When the Swan of Lichfield first saw her sister's 
fiatice, she described him as looking 'very 
clean.' '' 

Dinan offers many furnished houses to let, but 
none tempted the Americans. 

" What could we do with immense salles-d- 
maJiger and grand salons .? " they agreed, with 
their usual philosophic disesteem for all things 
beyond their reach. " We would n't take a coach 
and four as a gift except to give away again." 

Dinard after Dinan is beautiful and its breezes 
are pure. It, like Dinan, is much affected by the 
English, particularly by Oxford men, who come 
over in an English steamer to join English friends 
to spend a vacation in English villas, waited upon 
by English servants, under the impression that they 
are living in France. It has much of elegant-villa 
style, but is saved from the deadhness of such ele- 
gance by exquisite views of sea and shore, still too 
wild for villadom's encroachments. Here more 
English bathe in the summer even than French, 
being driven away from their own English bathing 
places by that same force of English numbers that 
has filled three quarters of the globe with the Eng- 
lish language and made the Doves' own country 
England's " dear daughter " when Americans be- 
have themselves to England's liking, " that danger- 
ous mixture of races " when they do not. 

At Saint-Malo, after Dinard, the dashers would 
have seven good hours before the steaming of the 
Honfleur for Jersey. One spot claimed their first 
attention, at some distance from the town. They 
scrambled over a rough stretch of ragged shore till 
they reached the promontory which at high-tide is 



2l8 HIRED FURNISHED. 

the island of Grand Be. There they climbed an 
acclivity, ragged, outcast, and forlorn, reminding 
them so vividly of stony New England pastures 
around some " Poor-House " that they sniffed in- 
stinctively for tansy and penny-royal. On and 
on they came to a most melancholy spot enclosed 
within a rusty railing and marked by a weather- 
stained granite cross. This is the spot chosen in 
his lifetime for a grave, by a genius of France. 
This treeless promontory, an island twice a day, 
is where Chateaubriand willed to be laid when the 
last embers of his long life died out, and left but 
ashes. He wished to sleep thus without inscrip- 
tion over his dust, with the eternal sea sounding 
his perpetual requiem. For he was a vain man, 
he considered his perpetual requiem fit employ- 
ment for the sea, and he fondly fancied his dust 
would make the spot a Mecca for pilgrims, who 
would need no inscription to tell them of the fire 
extinguished beneath that cross. Alas for the 
hopes of genius that depend upon other genera- 
tions than its own mortal one for personal tribute ! 
Chateaubriand's tomb draws no pilgrims save rare 
and pensive foreigners such as the Doves. No 
footpath is worn about the grave, no care seems 
bestowed upon it to keep it from the inevitable 
decay with which nature begins her ever-living 
mystery of birth and rebirth. Sometimes on 
Sundays, it is said, bevies of servants stroll over 
from Saint- Malo to chatter and romp about the 
grave which Chateaubriand hoped would gather 
deeper and deeper solemnity with added years, 
not one of the rompers knowing or caring for 
whom the cross was raised, but only that the 
place is a good one for the game of cache-cache. 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 219 

Also it is said that sentimental tourists, not fond 
of exercise or limited of time, write many poetic 
descriptions of this isle — as seen from Saint-Malo. 

Chateaubriand was born in Saint-Malo to the 
sound of the sea and the wind, and his young 
feet must often have danced over the spot where 
the old man of fourscore was laid to rest, apart 
as he had wished, from all mankind, alone witli 
the sea and the wind. He lived through various 
revolutions, he died in the very midst of the one 
which drove Louis Philippe ' into exile ; perhaps 
it is no wonder that he wished to remove even his 
ashes from the companionship of his shifty and 
tumultuous countrymen, and his cross from their 
picks and shovels. 

" If I die away from France," he wrote, " let 
my remains rest in exile till fifty years after my 
death. A travelling corpse is horrible to me. 
A skeleton white and hght is more easily moved. 
Mine will be less fatigued in such a last journey 
than when I dragged it here and there under the 
weight of my trials. Let my remains be spared 
a sacrilegious autopsy. Let me be spared a 
search in my frozen brain, and in my silent heart, 
for the mystery of my being. " 

What cares the rolling earth, the teeming world 
for the mystery of a being that ceased to be, half a 
century ago ? Had Chateaubriand died in exile, 
it is even probable that nobody would take thought 
in 1898 to move " the light and white skeleton" 
to Grand Be, which in Breton means tomb. 

The hotel in which the Americans took dejeimer 
was Chateaubriand's birthplace. One of the vi- 
ands was not named for the author of " Genie du 
Christianisme," '' Atala," and '^ Rene," as many 



220 HIRED FURNISHED. 

suppose, being, riot a Chateaubriand, but a Cha- 
teaubriant steak. 

As they walked a plank to the Honfleur they 
walked directly into England, and France la belle 
was behind them, — beautiful, -beautiful France, 
with its exquisite landscape, its wonderful archi- 
tecture, its romantic stories, its stirring history, its 
peerless salads, and its renowned omelets. Every- 
thing now was aggressively English, even the hang- 
ing buckets and scent of toasted kippers ; the 
stewardess tossed and caught her h\ as a juggler 
his cups and balls. 

" Probably a descendant of 'Enery the Hateth's 
steward," remarked one of the Doves, referring to 
an expense-book of that monarch in which was a 
charge for " sope-hashes " (or soap-ashes). 

" How long have we been on our Little Dash 
into France ? " asked a Dove, as peacock-blue 
shores grew dim and the winds of the Channel 
whistled about their ears. 

" Not more than four weeks," said the other, re- 
flectively. " Let me see ; we left Jersey on Satur- 
day ; Sunday we were on the Mount ; Monday at 
Dol and Dinan ; this is Tuesday with Dinard and 
Saint-Malo, and there is Jersey, looming large. 
Yes, it must be four weeks. Wonder if Martin 
will know us, with all our continental airs?" 

Know them? At least they knew her, as she 
smiled a welcome home in the green doorway of 
the Dove-cote. Indeed it was home, a genuine 
home-coming to their own vine and fig-tree, with all 
the delicious sense of smiling familiarity in qn&xj 
chair and table that returned voyagers always find 
in their own homes. There was Martin with a 
tray even before they had removed their gloves, 



A LITTLE DASFI INTO FRANCE. 221 

the teapot steaming upon it and two cups ready, 
with sugar or without, as each Hked it. A bright 
fire was in the sitting-room ; one needs all the 
brightness one can get after four days in that 
dirty France, and the twilight must have been 
chill on the water. A cheery table was spread in the 
dining-room below, everything was at perfection- 
point, the chops snapping hke mad lest that point 
vanish before they were taken up. 

^' Ha, ha ! " blinked an old-maidish object in 
the gay lamplight of the dining-room, " ha, ha ! 
the bride is home again from a foreign shore. We 
have missed you, dear ; I have not once been 
warm since you went away to foreign parts (I, you 
know, am English), and the cot has been dark 
without you, for Martin kept the doors shut. You 
have not seen so cosey and comfortable a friend as 
I am, have you now, in all your Little Dash? 
You yearned for me yesterday afternoon (a year 
ago), at your hotel in Dinan. You remember you 
were caught in a violent shower and had to hurry 
back. Then snug and dry in slippers and your 
comfortable two-franc-a-day chamber at the Hotel 
d'Angleterre, with the rain pouring down, you sent 
for a pot de tJiL When it came did n't you re- 
member me ? Well, I guess you did ! " (Here 
Rebecca spoke conspicuously through her nose.) 
" I am not handsome, I know ; I am brown of com- 
plexion and squat of figure ; you can't expect much 
beauty in a bridal purchase for a sixpence ; but 
then, you know, I 'm neither too large nor too small, 
as you hate my kind, and my interior is not cor- 
roded by astringent servitude to generations before 
yourself. Me, Brown Rebecca, you bought to 
serve you with freshness, therefore you remem- 



222 HIRED FURNISHED. 

bered me with tenderness yesterday afternoon (a 
year ago) when that hideous metalHc creature with 
dull face and corrugated sides leered at you full of 
yellow water. You thought of me as you sneered 
at the one spoonful of tea in all that water (tea, 
you know, costs four times as much in France as 
in Jersey), and then you performed a clever little 
smuggler-trick of adding a big shake to the water 
from your own little parcel of tea. Thus your 
five-o'clock was quite of its usual strength, but, 
dear, dear, did n't you drink it with your back 
turned upon that pewter tea-pot? Now say 
again how pleasant it is to return to your bridal 
presents, made to yourself, all blinking and wink- 
ing a welcome to the bride." 

" Ha, ha ! " chuckled another, a taller more 
showy object. " Brown Rebecca tells the truth ; we 
all sadly missed you during these months of your 
foreign residence. The cupboard is not at all gay 
when the door is shut, and one seems to hear 
sighing among those dusty muslin flowers under 
glass shades on the top shelf; we terribly miss your 
pleasant faces and your discussions of the charms 
and interests of this httle island (for I am Enghsh, 
you know ; you bought me for a shilling, although 
but for that imperceptible limp of my foot I should 
be worth eight). We have all hoped nothing un- 
handsome would befall our Bride ; now I greet 
her return with my arms full of oranges, and con- 
gratulations that she is no longer, what she was all 
the time of the Little Dash, a commonplace little 
old — " 

" Ha, ha, ha ! " discreetly interrupted tinkling 
and silvery chorus, " Ha, ha, ha ! " from spoon- 
vase, salt-cellars, cider-pitcher, " Ha, ha, ha ! don't 



A LITTLE DASH INTO FRANCE. 223 

forget us and our welcome upon your return home 
from ' ler Co?itino?ig.' " 

" Ha, ha ! " laughed the lamplight. " Ha, ha ! " 
the broadly grinning sitting-room fire. ^' Ha, ha ! " 
carpets and curtains and the Victorian prints of 
baronial hall. " Ha, ha ! " laughed even the door- 
knobs. " Ha, ha, ha ! " shouted the two easy- 
chairs with wide-open arms. 

The sitting-room table waited until the last with 
its welcome and its homeness of books and pages 
of manuscript scattered about. " Ha, ha, ha ! " 
it laughed. " I am exactly the same as that long- 
ago day on which you steamed away. Martin 
has not dared to touch me, but kept me covered 
with a sheet ; ce n'etait pas du tout gai, as they 
say in the foreign country from which you come. 
You see there are the same flowers blooming on 
the deep window-seats ; the same photographs of 
Sark and Jersey on the mantel-piece, with piles 
of books. It 's all very much the same after all 
these years of your absence, except this four days' 
accum.ulation of postal matter, and, oh, yes, here 's 
a bundle of new American magazines from the 
circulating library. Pough ! how they smell of 
tobacco ! " 

" Mong Doo .''" sighed the foolish Dove. " Let 
us no further roam, but remain Doves so long as 
we do live.'' 



224 HIRED FURNISHED. 



GUERNSEY. 

"The Channel Islands are all water," said a 
Dove. 

A moment after, — ■ 

" I wish we could go by land ! " 

Unnecessary to explain that this was the foolish 
Dove. 

" Our Dove-cote ought to be named the * Sea- 
gulley,' " continued Mrs. Dove ; " then, perhaps, 
we should not mind this spiteful Channel so 
much." 

" There were the Seaworthys, however," re- 
marked the other, " who leased that rugged old 
manor-house for a long term of years, and named 
it ' Sea Bright.' Seaworthy is a university don 
with eight months' vacation a year. You know 
they had to give up Sea Bright, in spite of its name, 
because they could not endure the Channel pas- 
sage. The people who have it now call it Glad- 
stone Villa or something of the kind, and live in it 
all the year." 

It was apropos of a visit to Guernsey. For 
weeks they had been planning this visit, but one of 
them, with a most natural dovely aversion to boil- 
ing salt water even when cold, had, from week to 
week, put it off. It was a curious fact but a posi- 
tive one that the Channel between the Gorey side 
of Jersey and France was the most enchanting 



GUERNSEY. 225 

of enchantresses, beguiling, luring, till one of the 
Doves, at least, almost spread wings to flee away 
into the mystery of its enticing ; while the Channel 
to be crossed from the St. Helier's side to Eng- 
land seemed dour and forbidding, no matter how 
brilliant its smile. Had Guernsey been between 
Gorey and Port Bail they would long ago have 
added its memory to their rich possessions. Un- 
fortunately for them, it was on the way to England : 
they must even come down to the commonplace 
manner of embarking in one of the regular Eng- 
lish packets, for all the world as if they were 
returning to drorin-room shoots and Cavendish 
Square. 

Queer, vastly queer, that after so much proing 
and conning they steamed away from St. Helier's 
on one of the grayest, windiest mornings of the 
entire season. Safely ensconced in the wind-pro- 
tected seats " for Ladies only," one of them set 
firm lips over iron resolution that upon the other's 
fund of pity and amusement no drafts whatever 
should be made. The plan is recommended to 
whosoever cares to profit by it. Long experience 
of tumbling waters has proved to one person at 
least, the sea-value of a stiff upper lip. 

" Should auld acquaintance be forgot ? " 

The air came thin and shrill across the glum 
water from Elizabeth Castle. If ever there was 
a chill sound in the world, that solitary piping was 
chilly. It split the air like a cold knife. Some 
of the passengers shivered at the sound, some 
faces turned blue. One man was reduced to 
tears. He was leaning over the railing below and 
wiping his eyes. 



226 HIRED FURNISHED, 

" A soldier whose time is out," explained a 
ship's officer. " It 's probably his chum whose 
time may not be up for years, saying good-bye." 

Two long hours to Guernsey ; but even two 
hours came to an end in time, and they reached 
Mrs. Bragg's quite in time to go marketing for 
the mid-day meal. Mrs. Bragg gave Mrs. Dove 
a dainty little basket, and the two set forth for 
novel observations, fresh experiences, and mutton- 
chops. 

Their lodgings were on the Esplanade, close 
upon the waterside. The house had been rec- 
ommended to them as " strictly honest, perfectly 
civil, obliging and neatj and where the cooking 
is all one could ask." The situation, too, had 
been recommended as " near everything," and 
where one could always see " plenty going on." 
This had seemed quite high praise enough. 
What Dove could ask more? So they walked 
straight from the steamer into the pretty sitting- 
room facing the water and the lesser islands of 
Herm and Jethou, with Sark behind them, which 
sitting-room, with two neat bedrooms and attend- 
ance (cooking, care of rooms, etc.), was theirs 
for twenty-five shillings a week, more in summer, 
less in winter. 

They never repented their choice, even though 
later they criticised it. Mrs. Dove was disposed 
to grumble every time they chmbed up the island's 
sides among the houses on the top. Whoever 
had so highly recommended Mrs. Bragg had 
neglected to inform himself, or herself, of the kind 
of " goings-on " preferred by the Doves. The 
arrival and departure of steamers, the bustle of 
hotels, the constant passing of trams and carriages, 



GUERNSEY. 22/ 

all the business of a lively port, — these were the 
goings-on before Mrs. Bragg's. Nevertheless the 
Americans found them too exasperatingly near, 
and in near things their souls and eyes took little 
pleasure ; wherein they differed from Charles 
Lamb and most other cockneys. From the 
windows of houses high above Mrs. Bragg's roof, 
were divine visions of things not near, dreamy 
sails upon a silent sea, fairy islands, a nebulous 
foreign coast, and at night a mystery of moonlight 
and shimmering waters to lift one absolutely out 
of mundane lodgings, no matter at how much or 
how little a week. 

All the same, Mrs. Bragg's was cheery, cosey, 
homelike. But when the final reckoning came 
for milk, eggs, bread, laundry, and various other 
things, there was, alas ! a discrepancy between 
Mrs. Bragg's reckoning and Mrs. Dove's. 

Discrepancies of account between lodger and 
landlady are not rare. 

" However, as this one is to your own advantage, 
I suppose you will say nothing about it," observed 
Mr. Dove. 

" It 's a whole cent," said she, with satisfaction. 
" I shall tell her, just to show what a clever keeper 
of accounts I am." 

How quaint and strange is Guernsey after more 
gentle Jersey, indeed after almost anywhere. 
Their lodgings were on the Esplanade, the narrow 
edge of the island down upon which most of the 
island looks. Behind the row of hotels and lodg- 
ing-houses where their own tent was pitched, the 
island steeply towered. Every possible road 
soared, every path straightly ascended. In time 
these Doves learned another way of rising to 



228 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Guernsey's heights without steep paths and roads. 
It was by means of a most extraordinary succession 
of stone steps, hundreds of them, grimy and of 
ancient aspect, grapphng the side of the island 
like scahng-ladders. No description can give an 
idea of these steps or stairs, which perhaps explains 
the fact that all descriptions of Guernsey mention 
them, if at all, only slightly. 

The steps began obscurely among the foreign- 
looking houses of the lower town ; Mrs. Dove 
often hunted for them in vain. Then they rose ob- 
scurely into perpetual twilight, till with dumb, cold 
malice they took possession of the unwary stranger 
like some Pit-and-Pendulum nightmare ending in 
doom. Alone Mrs. Dove was entirely lost among 
them ; she never could understand, she does not 
to this day, how wingless beings freely found their 
way among them. The spectacle of her fellow-crea- 
tures, or what seemed like such, passing indiffer- 
ently up and down these sphinx-hke stones almost 
took her breath away. A whistling butcher-boy, 
basket on arm, a schoolboy with his books, almost 
seemed to her creatures of Walpurgis night. She 
yearned but never dared, to ask them their clue 
to the dusky labyrinth, or if some other extra 
sense these island folk possessed, unknown to the 
rest of the world, to see daylight in a nightmare 
maze. 

" You surely know when you are going straight 
up the side of the island," said Mr. Dove, who 
never lost his way in his life. 

" No, I do not," she mourned. " I stop a 
moment for breath, in an instant three several and 
different stretches of stone steps sneak away from 
before my face, each climbing as much as the 



GUERNSEY. 229 

others. How am I to know which is the up I 
seek when all are up ? " 

From the central and direct steps, as Mrs. Dove 
found, are various branchings. To take one of 
these branchings was to be lost among high 
and blank stone walls of gardens and dwellings. 
Sometimes the bewildered American walked into 
private gardens, sometimes she paused upon thresh- 
olds of kitchens, sometimes walls imprisoned her, 
only a tiny space of sky high above and countless 
steps before her. Then she felt comparatively 
safe, for step by step she was sure to arrive some- 
w/iere, whereas with branchings on every side 
she might wander forever, arriving nowhere every 
time. 

These marvellous steps are for the convenience 
of houses whose fronts are upon the climbing 
streets. The labyrinth follows the convenience of 
each house clutching the island's side, hence so 
many branchings. Mrs. Dove hated them, — un- 
utterably, inexpressibly hated. She looked down 
them from the top as into an infernal pit ; from the 
bottom she looked up as towards some sorcerer's 
cave in a mountain side. 

"It is never of any use to ask where I am," she 
repined. ''What difference does it make to me 
whether I am beside Colonel Jones's pantry or 
Major Smith's bedroom ? Neither is it of any use 
to try to tell where I want to go ; for I never know 
myself I usually ask the nearest way out. I am 
always directed to it down the very way I came. 
They are called ' Constitution Steps,' I suppose 
because they are enough to ruin the best constitu- 
tion in the world." 

Almost everywhere else in Guernsey than on 



230 HIRED FURNISHED. 

those constitution-ruining steps it was pleasant to 
ask one's way. 

'^ Will you kindly tell us what building that is? " 

"That is the Royal Court House," answers 
the small boy, " erected in 1799, at a cost of seven 
thousand pounds, but lately enlarged and improved. 
Inside are many portraits." 

They ask the same question of a youth in a 
chemist's shop. 

'•^ That is the Grange Club," he answers courte- 
ously, " frequented by the best society in town ; 
strangers are temporarily admitted. The tower 
you see is Victoria tower, built in 1848 to com- 
memorate the visit of her Majesty in 1846." 

" Where will this road lead us? " 

"To the Bailiff's Cross, sir," answers the work- 
ing-woman addressed. " You will find a flat stone 
a mile or two beyond. There the Bailiff of Guern- 
sey in the thirteenth century took the sacrament on 
his way to execution. The place where he was 
gibbeted is near by, anybody will tell you where." 

" Animated guide-books ! " declared the Ameri- 
cans. " It is good to feel that one is welcome 
in a place, even as a tourist. In some places the 
tourist cannot get a civil answer unless he pays 
for it." 

They remembered an occasion in Paris, one in 
London, one in Ravenna, one in Worthing, Eng- 
land. In Paris one evening they stopped a few 
moments before the window of a mean boutique 
in a mean street to read certain written directions 
in their hands. While they read a man issued 
from the shop and demanded a sou for the use of 
his light. In London they once asked the way of 
a bootblack, who called after them, " Told you 



GUERNSEY. 23 1 

wrong ! You did n't give me nothin'." In 
Ravenna cabmen followed them with persistent 
entreaty because they chose to walk from the 
station to their hotel, — the entreaties, as the dis- 
tance to the hotel lessened, changing to curiosity 
as to how much their shoes cost them a year, and 
if there were no carriages — in Russia ! 

In Worthing one bitterly cold winter's day in 
1892, Mrs. Dove, while waiting the omnibus to 
Broadwater, stepped within a sheltering recess. It 
chanced to be the recess of somebody's front 
door, as she found when the front door opened and 
a forbidding face, evidently mistress of the house, 
informed her, " This is not for the convenience of 
the pubhc." Tlie rudeness was so entirely gratui- 
tous that the American became almost speechless. 
Murmuring something like " Only five minutes' pro- 
tection from the cold wind," she fled to the nearest 
open door and begged for a moment's shelter. 

The grocer replied with the most kindly cour- 
tesy, " Certainly, madame, as long as you wish," 
and brought her a chair. 

" Can you tell me who lives inside the door 
from which I just came ? " she asked. 

" Oh, yes, the postmaster," answered the man. 

The Americans knew all about the wicked 
bailiff, a Guernsey tradition of ages agone. A 
field is still called by the name of his intended 
victim, and the place of his own gibbet was the 
place of public execution for centuries. It is only 
necessary to realize the semi-regal importance of 
a Norman bailiff to understand what a convulsion 
of insular nature must have witnessed the hanging 
of one, and how readily the story immortalized 
itself 



2 32 HIRED FURNISHED. 

The bailiff's house is still shown. It is a low 
granite building, once thatched, with a round door- 
way and round tower after the Channel-Island 
fashion. Guernsey seigneurs, like those of Jersey, 
were not magnificently lodged. This baihff owned 
a field across which a neighbor had a right of way 
to the spring used by both families. The bailiff 
was annoyed by the neighbor's use of the right of 
way and tried to buy him off. The neighbor 
refused to be bought off and doubtless made him- 
self excessively disagreeable. Quite exasperated 
by the continual faring to and fro in front of his 
house by his neighbor's servants and cattle, he 
determined to rid himself of his neighbor. During 
the harvest of 1264, the baihff hid two of his silver 
cups in a wheat-rick and then spread a report of 
his having been robbed, at the same time express- 
ing strong suspicions of his neighbor. At the 
trial, witnesses suborned by the powerful bailiff 
gave such strong evidence against the accused 
that the judge was just passing sentence of death 
upon him, when one of the bailiff's servants came 
rushing in crying, " They are found ! they are 
found ! " The bailiff was so overcome with rage 
and vexation that he unwittingly exclaimed, " Thou 
wretch ! did I not tell thee not to touch that 
rick?" This opened the eyes of the Court, who 
condemned the bailiff to the death meant for his 
victim, 

" Do you suppose his ghost haunts the spot ? " 
asked a Dove. 

" Of course,'' answered the other ; " else we 
should not now be walking all this way merely to 
see the spot where Gaultier de la Salle repented 
of his crime six centuries and thirty-one years ago. 



GUERNSEY. 233 

What are memories but ghosts ? What are tra- 
ditions but ghosts of ghosts ? " 

Guernsey in some respects seems more foreign, 
less English, than Jersey. One reason of its for- 
eignness is its currency. Both Guernsey and 
Jersey have the right of copper coinage, and both 
have thus penny pieces (or two cents) unlike each 
other's and unlike England's. But whereas Jersey's 
currency is entirely British, Guernsey's is entirely 
French. Francs and French gold pieces are in 
universal circulation. On the one tramline the 
Doves offered an English shilling and received a 
franc in change. A premium is upon English 
money, and to keep one's own, to lose nothing in 
buying with it, the stranger must never forget just 
how much his English coin is worth in French 
silver. To add to the bemuddlement, the price 
of an article is sometimes given in English money, 
and then the stranger is sure to have just changed 
all his money into French. When he has only 
English money nobody ever thinks to give a price 
except in francs. The post-office, being English, 
of course sells stamps only for English coin. 
Nevertheless, one need not be provided with any 
other than French money, for the officials are 
always prepared to change French money into 
English. Mrs. Dove became aware of this when 
she bought her first dozen 2^^-stamps for her 
American letters. She had changed all her Eng- 
lish money into French before remembering that 
she needed stamps, then bought the English 
stamps with French money, paying a higher pre- 
mium than she had just been allowed, — a most 
initiating transaction. 

"What do you expect me to give you for this?" 



234 HIRED FURNISHED. 

asked the market-woman of whom the Americans 
bought their first Guernsey butter and to whom 
they offered an Enghsh half-crown. 

Not yet had Mrs. Dove learned the queerness 
of Guernsey money, so she soberly answered, — 

'' Butter." 

She was meant to say how little premium she 
would accept in place of the regulation one, per- 
fectly well known to the woman. In time the 
Doves learned to insist upon English change for 
English coin when they found they had no French 
to offer. There was generally then a great fuss 
and pretence of hunting or borrowing, but in the 
end the English money was forthcoming from 
somewhere. It is said that the fine Guernsey 
market-house was built by the profits of francs 
given in change for shillings. 

However that may be, the market-house seemed 
verily a petite Fra7tce. French, or its cousin sev- 
eral times removed, was the language among the 
market people, although more English was spoken 
than in the Jersey market. The market-women 
had each her name above her stall, and every 
name was French. There were Marettes, Brissons, 
Longuevilles, Massarts, etc. Yet another anomaly 
of these anomalous isles, not one of the Marettes, 
Brissons, Longuevilles, was " Madame ; " every 
one of them was " Mrs." 

" This constant change of currency tempts to 
crime," Mrs. Dove solemnly remarked. " It 
tempts, and to-day I fell." 

" How much booty did you get away with? " 

"It is not the ill-gotten booty," she lamented, 
" but the innocent and smiling youth upon whom 
I have fastened shameful suspicions ! While you 



GUERNSEY. 235 

were busy with your letters this morning, you know 
I repeated our tramway ride to St. Sampson. 
When I paid my fare, the pleasant faced youth, 
no doubt as honest as the day, charged me two- 
pence to the end of the ride. You know the car 
stops half-way out and waits for the returning one. 
Like the simpleton I am, I left the car I was on, 
and took the return car, thinking we had arrived 
at the end of the line. The wind was blowing 
fiercely and I was bitterly cold, or I should not 
have done so. When I paid my return fare, the 
conductor took but a penny from me, and I 
remarked that I had paid two pence going out. 
Observe the honesty of Guernsey folk : the con- 
ductor seemed much disturbed that I had been 
over-charged (which I had not), and if you will 
believe it, gave me a penny from his own store ! " 

" Then your two penny rides cost you two 
pennies." 

" Yes, yes ; but I paid to St. Sampson, and 
stopped half-way there. That poor slandered 
youth, falsely accused and made an object of sus- 
picion to his fellows ! What shall I do ? To hunt 
him up and give him a penny would add insult 
to injury. What shall I do?" 

" Write a note to the management and state 
the facts." 

Very conscientiously the lady wrote the letter. 

Months afterwards in Paris, she found it be- 
tween the pages of a Guernsey Guide. 

To-day while wintry winds beat about a New 
England home and snow wreaths dim every vista 
from the windows a writing woman is conscious that 
a gloom as wintry settles over certain of her summer 



22,6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

memories. She knows that this very hour, upon 
a romantic rock against which the gray Atlantic 
surges forever, her memory is still green. Ever- 
green is that memory, as the London '■'■ dead- 
beat/' who slandered one innocent man out of 
eight Guernsey Doubles, which in value make 
one English penny. 

" I am thankful Jersey has no tramways," she 
murmurs. " No knowing how many rides 1 might 
have stolen there, even with a familiar currency." 

Her thoughts dwell upon beautiful Jersey and 
its toddling babes of railway trains, till her brow 
clears amid dreams of many an enchanting little 
journey, till it even does not overcloud again 
when her companion says, — 

" Guernsey with those Constitution Steps can 
never have a railway until we railway to the moon." 
Which may be sooner than we expect. 

Guernsey is an island of flowers, as Jersey is 
of fruits and vegetables. From the last of Febru- 
ary, it is a sight of itself, the wealth of daffodils 
sent by every steamer to Covent Garden. The 
year is a procession of flowers, every month with its 
queen flower of all. They are raised under glass, 
and in the open air, the hydrangeas, rhododen- 
drons, camellias, of a splendor far beyond their 
kind elsewhere. Every now and then, even so 
early as May, when doors swing open in blank 
stone walls, one catches glimpses of gardens, all 
ablaze with color, and waves of fragrance surge 
forth as from some celestial country. Upon the 
arrival of all the steamers, men and women go on 
board with flowers for sale. To one coming from 
chilly England, and touching Guernsey only on 
the way to Jersey, the sight of all these dewy 



GUERNSEY. 237 

blossoms is scarcely less than heavenly. One 
seems really to have touched a clime ten thou- 
sand miles away from gray and misty Cavendish 
Square. Jersey people are rather given to tip- 
tilting the nose at Guernsey flowers when on their 
way to London, — " As if we had not as good of 
our own ; " but the fact that the flower-venders pre- 
sent themselves upon England-bound steamers, 
just as much as upon Jersey-bound, proves that 
somebody buys them, even if Jersey people do not. 
That Guernsey excels in flowers does not argue 
any want of vegetables. The argument would be 
foolish in face of all these island housekeepers re- 
turning from market. There are few or no wagons 
taking orders, and few if any delivery wagons. 
The housekeepers buy in the Paris fashion, enough 
for to-day but nothing for to-morrow, and carry 
their purchases home themselves. The prevalent 
custom of " cabbage nets," or string bags, makes 
the housekeepers' marketing of lively interest to 
strangers. No attempt is made at concealment ; 
so through the nets' meshes one discovers that 
the tall lady in mourning will have lamb and pease 
for dinner, with strawberries and a cream cheese, 
while the little lady in blue has a family unusually 
fond of salad with their steak, judging by the 
quantity she carries. It is not the season for 
conger soup (although the monstrous creatures 
can be bought dried), else many of the cabbage 
nets would carry great sections of them. Guernsey, 
as well as Jersey and the other islands, is enor- 
mously fond of the conger eel. In their season 
they lie in the markets in huge serpentine coils, 
weighing at times even thirty pounds. While at 
Dove Cottage the Americans heard much of this 



238 HIRED FURNISHED. 

rare delicacy ; and one day dainty Lady Flo' 
quite pitied them that they had always come to 
the islands just as the congers swam, wriggled, or 
burrowed out of reach. 

Guernsey has never done anything to make 
itself famous, yet in point of size it exceeds the 
immortal island of Ithaca, a rocky and mountain- 
ous bit of the world twenty-five miles in circum- 
ference. Yet Ithaca was long the home of Ulysses, 
whose adventures on his return to it from the 
Trojan War form the subject of the Odyssey. 
Small and unfamed as it is, romantic Guernsey 
has drawn more than one American to live and 
die within its seagirt walls. In the chief burial- 
ground one reads of these dead. One was a 
" spinster " '^ born in South Carolina, America, in 
1794, died in Guernsey aged 74." Another was 
from " Kinosha, America." Beneath the name of 
still another may be read the words, "A friend 
sinsciere layeth here," — a proof that the Guern- 
sey stone-cutter was more shaky in his English 
than Guernseymen usually are. It reminded the 
Doves of an inscription they saw over a Frencli- 
man in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, — " Pryie pour 
sonarm." 

"Probably the American relatives ordered the 
marble and inscription," concluded the Doves, 
" and have no idea that their friend sincere lies 
on English territory under spelling very much 
worse than the English-despised American." 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 239 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 

It was all up hill the day, the one show day of 
the week, that the Doves climbed up to the Ilaute- 
ville House, where Victor Hugo lived in exile for 
eighteen years. Before he came to Guernsey 
and bought Hauteville House he had lived three 
years in Jersey, surrounded by an uproarious band 
of also exiled Frenchmen. These men, with their 
domestic and social habits a la frangaise, so scan- 
dalized the good Jersey folk, unaccustomed to 
seeing wives and non-wives live almost under the 
same roofs, that Jersey was made none too com- 
fortable for the exiles. When in their furiously 
radical paper these French journalists openly re- 
viled and insulted the Queen of England because 
of her welcome to Louis Napoleon in 1855, the 
excuse was gladly taken to expel them from the 
island. 

Edmond Bir6, in his book on Hugo, says that 
the exiles received a warmer welcome in Guernsey 
than would otherwise have been extended to them 
for this very reason. Mrs. Dove was quite ready 
to beheve this when she heard one of the gende 
Bragg sisters throw doubts upon the genuineness 
of Tom Thumb's trousers preserved in a museum, 
for no other reason than that the museum was in 
Jersey, and not Guernsey ; and when the market- 
women sniffed at the name of Jersey honey and 



240 HIRED FURNISHED. 

butter, of which Chateaubriand wrote, " Le vent de 
1' Ocean, qui semble dementir de sarudesse, donne 
a Jersey du miel exquis, de la creme d'une dou- 
ceur extraordinaire, et du beurre d'un jaune fonce 
qui sent la violette ; " when mild Mrs. Bragg as- 
serted that Jersey is the Paradise of English 
'Arries, who always go past Guernsey without 
stopping ; and when told of a Bible chained to a 
stone wayside seat on one of Jersey's small in- 
clines, is sure that Jersey needs such warning as 
Guernsey never did. 

The house in which Hugo lived in Jersey was 
mean and low indeed, compared with Hauteville 
House. It was but a stone's throw from the 
Dove Cot ; the Doves knew it as an unattractive 
boarding-house. The view from the front was 
sterile and flat ; the house itself one in which 
one could not imagine a poet unless in the poetic 
stage where his effusions go down upon grocers' 
brown paper. Victor Hugo spoke of this Marine 
Terrace as flat, square, and " tombshaped." How- 
ever, it is, and was in the fifties, like most Jersey 
houses, turned with its ugliest side to public ob- 
servation. Upon the other side is a garden and 
terrace sloping to the sea, — the terrace upon which 
sad Madame Hugo passed so many hours "alone 
with my darning and my dead." Poor woman ! 
not only was she the neglected wife of a faithless 
husband, but she knew that her supplanter, who 
accompanied Hugo in all his wanderings and who 
would openly take a wife's place in his household 
after her own death, kept open house not only 
for Hugo's friends, but for the poor wife's as well. 
Even there in Jersey the supplanter one day 
raised her glass at dinner, where was Madame 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 24 1 

Hugo's cousin Asseline, and insolently said, " A la 
sante de votre cousine." 

Victor Hugo is remembered as untidy in his 
dress, always wearing a black coat and gray 
trousers very much the worse for dirt, and a shock- 
ing bad hat, as was becoming to a republican 
proscrit. Nobody remembers ever to have seen 
Madame Hugo, who lived in close retirement with 
her bas et chaiissettes. Hugo had not yet written 
his most celebrated romances, although twenty 
years and more had elapsed since the literary 
revolution led by " Hernani" and " Notre Dame de 
Paris.'"' He was poet and dramatist until he came 
to Jersey. Here, where even the wind forgets its 
bitterness and the wintry sky its gloom, in the 
Jersey of which he wrote, — 

"Jersey rit, terre libre au sein de sombres mers, 
Les genets sont en fleur, I'agneau pait les pres verts, 
L'ecume jette aux rocs ses blanches mousselines ; 
Par moments apparait au sommet des collines, 
Livrant ses crins dpars au vent ipre et joyeux, 
Un cheval effare, qui hennit dans les cieux, — " 

here, in this Jersey of lambs and blooms, this 
Jersey where Chateaubriand found the springtime 
to keep its youth longer than anywhere else, Jersey 
a /// dejleurs, here Hugo wrote his " Chatiments," 
full of blazing, blasting, blighting hate, full of a sort 
of demoniac fury, which in spite of its artistic form 
forces one to remember that both Victor Hugo's 
brother and his daughter died in lunatic asylums. 
*' Les Chatiments " was printed in Jersey. Its ad- 
mirers called it delire sacre. Mme. Hugo wrote to a 
friend, in fear of the poverty that threatened them : 
" For my part I plan every day how I may give my 

16 



242 HIRED FURNISHED. 

family a dinner no poorer than that of yesterday ; " 
and to another: " Les has et les chaussettes rac- 
commod^s, je fais un travail : mon mari me raconte 
toute sa vie le soir apres le diner ; cela fournira des 
especes de memoires ; j'ai une belle terrasse, \ raes 
pieds est la mer, je vais souvent me promener, je 
pense k mes morts." 

The volume which came of these recountings 
vi^as ''Victor Hugo: Par un t^moin de sa Vie," 
written ostensibly by Madame Hugo, but really by 
himself. 

When the poet became many times millionnaire 
and a glory, or at least a boast, of France, Madame 
Hugo planned no more how to keep his dinners 
from tasting of poverty and exile ; she no longer 
cared for his has et chaussettes. Neither, we may 
suppose, did the ex-actress of the Porte Saint 
Martin who took her place at the head of Hugo's 
household, while the legitimate wife slept under 
the sod of a poor little country churchyard in 
Normandy. 

The ex-actress, a very poor actress although 
beautiful, is sometimes spoken of as " Madame 
Strasbourg," having been the model for the 
statue by that name in the Place de la Concorde. 

During the Hugo sojourn in Jersey, from 1852 
to 1855, the table-tipping craze was at its height. 
Hugo was much excited by it, and devoted much 
time to the tables of Marine Terrace. Madame 
Hugo, we may be sure, asked very little else of the 
" spirits," than tidings of her idolized daughter 
Leopoldine, drowned at Villequier in 1843, eight 
months after marriage, at nineteen years of age. 
Victor Hugo spent sleepless nights haunted by 
mysterious visions. Every morning when the 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 243 

family met there' was much discourse upon these 
dreams and visions, pale apparitions and mystic 
murmurs. Some account was kept of the poet's 
extraordinary dialogues with unseen visitors ; the 
manuscript is still in existence. Among the other 
ghosts summoned to Marine Terrace were a score 
of headless ones, ghosts of celebrated victims of 
the guillotine. Andr^ Chenier came to finish a 
piece of verse for Hugo, and once a table rep- 
resenting Marat bowed profoundly when Hugo 
entered the room, and announced that in a pre- 
vious state of existence Victor Hugo had been a 
revolutionist of 1793, and had cut off, or caused 
to be cut off, the head of Louis XVI. We may 
imagine how the author of " Dernier Jour d'un 
Condamn^ " became imaginatively intoxicated in 
this grewsome company. 

In October, 1855, the Jersey exiles, wrought to 
a French frenzy by the glory of " M. Bonaparte," 
after the fall of Sebastopol, his exchange of visits 
with Victoria, and the success of the Exposition 
universelle de Paris, his apogee in fact, wrote the 
screeching open letter to the Queen which com- 
pelled them to leave the island within six days. 
Hugo struggled, protested, covered the walls of 
Jersey with fiery proclamations, but all to no 
effect ; at the end of six days he and his sons 
steamed away on an English packet to Guernsey, 
where he lived eighteen years, till the fall of the 
empire. 

Hauteville House is more imposing than Marine 
Terrace, yet not more so than its close neighbors 
on each side. Since Victor Hugo bought it 
French journahsts have industriously spread the 



244 HIRED FURNISHED. 

superstition that one of its chief attractions to 
him was that it was known to be haunted. Guern- 
sey people are not, however, acquainted with the 
ghost, who from all accounts was a Parisian not a 
Channel Islander. 

The house has no sort of poetic aspect, as the 
Doves climb the steep paved road set thick with 
comfortable dwellings in the style of a country 
town. It is a large brown house with a wee 
bit of ground before it, two oak trees, and a high 
iron raihng. The numerous windows upon the 
front never fail to attract the attention of French- 
men, because they are "guillotine " windows ; that 
is, open laterally a ranglaise, and not longitudi- 
nally a la fra7i(^aise. Perhaps French journalists 
see something revolutionary in the very windows 
of Hauteville House, as well as in Hugo's ill- 
standing with the Guernsey aristocracy because 
he refused to doff his hat in the presence of the 
national anthem, " God save the Queen." 

They touch an electric bell, a curious thing to 
do at the door of a haunted house. When a suffi- 
cient time has elapsed for a pair of hands to be 
roughly washed and dried, a towsled head is 
thrust from a basement window and inquires their 
business. They answer, in Yankee fashion and 
surprise, with another question : " Is this not the 
day in which the House is shown?" With that 
the head disappeared, to appear at the door a 
moment later with a markedly unamiable look, as if 
at intruders. They ask timidly again if they are 
mistaken in the day, and are answered by a short 
" No." The woman's manner gave reason to sus- 
pect that whoever profited by the shilling admis- 
sion, it was not she. She evidently resented being 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 245 

called from her basement to repeat a monotonous 
story. It was almost apparent, too, if not quite, 
that although this was the day in which the House 
was announced to be shown, and quite in the 
Guernsey season, visitors were really not expected, 
for floors were up, gas-fitters and plumbers at 
work. 

" Do many visitors come ? " Mrs. Dove feebly 
asks. 

Over her shoulder the woman coldly tosses her 
answer : " We get a good few." 

Whereupon Mrs. Dove feels herself consider- 
ably more few than good. 

In Hauteville House, so well named, Victor 
Hugo's pen was very productive. Here he wrote 
three famous books, one of them the " Travailleurs 
de la Mer," of which the scenes are mostly in sight 
of the high and far-viewing windows of his work- 
room. His pen was not idle, yet time was some- 
what heavy on his hands, shut away as he was 
from the social diversions of his beloved Paris 
and the adulations of his worshippers. Time hung 
heavy, so he set himself to work to lighten it by 
decorating this House of Exile according to his 
own taste. He always prided himself upon his 
architectural and decorative skill, and frequently 
remarked to his friends that, in making a poet of 
himself, he had spoiled a better decorative artist, — 
a bit of mock humility which could have imposed 
itself upon nobody. Of course he never hinted 
that his cabinet-maker's skill was an inheritance. 

How much of Victor Hugo and his decorative 
work does this woman know who whisks the 
Doves through the house as if they were dirt and 
she a broom ? They ask a few meek questions, 



246 HIRED FURNISHED. 

but receive such short and unsatisfactory answers 
that they ask no more, and Hsten to her perfunc- 
tory descriptions y^i'/Zd' de 7nieiix, 

The interior and its decorations are curious 
beyond the point of eccentricity. The decorator 
followed no known style, nor was even a 
law unto himself. So far as canons of art go, 
the whole is perfectly lawless, except in the law 
that Victor Hugo, the poet and romanticist, could 
and would do as he pleased with his own. His 
decorative taste, like his poetic and imaginative, 
concerned itself chiefly with mediaeval gothic, 
mixed with curious adaptations from both the 
Chinese and Japanese, and the art of the lower 
empire. The result is always as fantastic and 
unnatural as the gargoyles of his romances imitat- 
ing the manners and deeds of men. The vesti- 
bule of Hauteville House presents an object, 
a sort of altar supported on a pedestal representing 
scenes from " Notre Dame de Paris," sculptured 
and gilded. Two reception rooms opening from 
this vestibule have the ceihngs formed of faience 
in plaques, the wall completely covered with pieces 
of porcelain, no doubt well worth seeing if the 
cicerone were not in such a haste to be rid of 
one. She does deign to say that the shelves upon 
which the porcelain is ranged, and the brackets 
under them, were all sculptured and chiselled by 
the poet, and that a set of Sevres upon the wall 
was the gift of Charles X. 

The large dining-room was added to the house 
by Victor Hugo. It has a predominating gothic 
effect, with tall elaborately carved sideboards re- 
sembling altars of cathedral chapels, its high- 
backed sculptured chairs and antique, covered 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 247 

with tapestry, — ■ yet even thus a queerly confused 
effect, with Moorish tiles, Florentine plaques, and 
Etruscan potteries crowding each other every- 
where. Victor Hugo was very fond of driving 
bargains with the Guernsey fish people for the 
carved chests and chairs that had come down to 
them since they knew not when. He did not 
leave these genuinely curious things in their origi- 
nal condition, but cut them up and made them 
over according to his bizarre taste ; here a bit, 
and there a bit, worked into some Hugoesque 
creation floridly medieval, one might say, and 
often surmounted with " V. H." as a sovereign 
cipher. 

In this room are many Hugo portraits, more of 
the poet than of anybody else, but the most 
interesting one of Madame Hugo. Victor Hugo's 
suffer in interest from the fact that they are too 
numerous in the world. With Victor Hugo por- 
traits in every shop window, one does not need to 
gaze reverently upon them in Hauteville House. 
In fact, it would be rather difficult to do so in 
the face of the fact unanimously asserted by 
these portraits, that Hugo in his youth was 
decidedly insignificant-looking. For those who 
have seen only the coarsely sensual head of his 
old age, called '' leonine " by his worshippers, and 
that through the glamour of his renown, it may not 
be easy to picture him anything else than a pic- 
turesque giant with Homeric head and hair, and 
stature of any number of feet and inches imagina- 
tion may choose to give him. Homeric giants of 
franc-apiece photographs never stand upon their 
legs, hence it is a severe disillusionment to find 
that before he became famous Victor Hugo was not 



248 HIRED FURNISHED, 

only under-sized, but upon occasions even known 
to smirk. Not one of the portraits gives one's 
idea of a poet, or of a gentleman, but rather of 
a lively sort of cabinet-maker. 

The Doves re-read Victor Hugo during their 
stay upon Guernsey and within an easy stroll of 
St. Sampson, the scene of Gilliatt's semi-savage 
youth. They read with so many a pish and pshaw, 
so many a " just hear this," that a generation ago 
would have writ them down in the literary fashion- 
book of that time as souls deaf to the music of 
genius. A generation ago they might have claimed 
to hear clearly that music from the Hugo horn, 
when in reality it might have been the echo of 
some other horn, the fashionable critic's perhaps. 
Now they saw a genius overlaid with bathos ; a 
genius made absurd by turgid striving to seem 
infinitely larger than it was. 

The dado of this room is composed of inscrip- 
tions. Needless to say their guide gave them no 
time to read them. In this dining-room was placed 
the ''Ancestor's Chair" by which Victor Hugo 
invited the hauntings he so much desired, seeming 
not to be satisfied with the original ghost thrown 
in with the house. This " Ancestor's Chair " is of 
oak, heavily sculptured with Hugo arms to which 
Victor Hugo laid unwarranted claim. From arm 
to arm is an iron chain preventing the chair's occu- 
pancy by any living sitter (unless Victor Hugo chose 
to remove it and sit there himself as the ghost's 
representative), and also chiselled and painted. 
Some of the fifteenth-century chair was the handi- 
work of the poet ; he chiselled the inscription 
which declares that ancestral ghosts are ever 
present with their descendants, and he gave it to 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 249 

be understood in Guernsey that his fatlier, General 
Hugo, often came to sit there in his uniform, dur- 
ing family banquets. In such case it was surely 
not the house that was haunted, but its owner. 
For why should that highly respectable ghost, evi- 
dently a boiiJie fourchette since he came only when 
feasts were on hand, take the trouble to haunt a 
house he had never entered in life, upon an island 
in no way connected with his history? Our guide 
does not beheve in his ghostship. She has never 
seen such a ghost, and what she has never seen 
she evidently does not beheve in. She is evi- 
dently a Guernsey matron ; probably the gallant 
warrior would not consider her worth wasting his 
ghostly time upon, the Hugos having always been 
notoriously fond of a pretty face. 

" I wonder if Victor Hugo's carpenter grand- 
father is ever invited to sit there," whispered one 
of the infidels. 

" As the great republican never mentioned any 
ancestors that were not noble, probably not," 
whispered the other. " His pedigree was as bogus 
as his piety." 

The grand salon would no doubt repay long 
study. A mere glimpse showed walls hung with 
rich tapestries, cabinets crowded with objets d'ari 
and various relics under glass, said to be of 
conquerors and kings. One table belonged to 
Charles II. of England, who strewed these islands 
pretty thickly with tables, to say nothing about 
boots and other things. 

The Guernsey matron's haste would have pre- 
vented any clear comprehension of this richness 
even at best. As it was, the Dove did not ask to 
linger, seeing bits of feminine needle-work upon 



2 50 HIRED FURNISHED. 

chairs by the noble windows, and both books and 
chairs overturned upon the balconies as if some- 
body or somebodies had taken sadden flight. 
Victor Hugo's daughter-in-law Madame Lockroy 
and family occupy HauteviUe House as a summer 
home, and some of them had fled before the un- 
expected and unaccustomed visitors. 

But the poet's work-room, his '^ crystal cage " 
he described it, was the most interesting of all. It 
is a bare little place scarcely better than a prison- 
cell, and built upon the roof in the recesses of 
chimneys and mansard windows. Hugo called it 
his "lookout," and told that he built it with the 
revenue of his "Contemplations." It is almost 
entirely of glass ; in the winter it must be intoler- 
ably cold, in summer intolerably hot. Here upon 
a bare wooden shelf, to be lowered or lifted at will, 
he re-wrote " Les Mis^rables," wrote " Les Tra- 
vailleurs de la Mer " and " Quatre-vingt-treize." 

The Guernsey matron deigns to remark that he 
always wrote standing ; and the strangers remark 
anew how few his inches must have been to make 
that shelf of comfortable writing height. Nothing 
else whatever is in this narrow glass house except 
a dingy divan decidedly /J?//^/// as the French say, 
a porcelain stove, a wooden mantel, and a mirror 
upon which are now faded flowers painted by his 
own hand. During eighteen years Victor Hugo 
wrote almost daily here. His customary working- 
dress was as peculiar and striking as the monk's 
frock in which Balzac worked day and night when 
the writing fury was upon him. Victor Hugo did 
not write in furies, but most methodically. He 
began his work at three o'clock in the morning, 
and ended his working-day at noon. Every winter 



HAUTEVILLE HOUSE. 25 I 

morning his lamp in that lofty eyrie could be seen 
from afar, even afar out upon the water, a tiny star 
in the darkness, the star of genius high above every 
head asleep or awake upon that steep rock in the 
sea. When the day broke the poet was to be seen 
of all men, by whoever passed in the street below 
and chose to lift his eyes, writing with might and 
main in a fiery gown red enough to seem a spot 
of flame, quite as Hugo was willing it should 
seem, who never doubted himself flame in a dull 
world. 

The view from this roof-study is immense, tak- 
ing in all the roofs of the island upon that side, 
many-shaped roofs of dwellings, and glass roofs of 
vineries gUttering in the sun, the vessels of the 
Port, the far stretch of St. Sampson where Gilliatt 
lived, and the ever encircling sea upon which he 
toiled and in which he committed as impossible a 
suicide, in forgetting the automatic despotism of 
the muscles, as exists upon any page of romance 
in the world. 

Gilliatt's rock-chair is invisible from those win- 
dows, from everywhere. It disappeared when the 
sea closed over Gilliatt's head. No doubt Victor 
Hugo expected to immortalize Guernsey, as a 
poetic return for its hospitality to him when Jersey 
cast him out. No doubt he expected that shrines 
would be made wherever Gilliatt set his foot. 
The sad truth is that few visitors remember that 
Hugo here posed as a Napoleon upon St. Helena, 
nobody ever asks for Gilhatt-shrines or relics ; 
when "Nellie" points out the haunted guard-house 
of Hugo's novel very few even of reading people 
remember that in it Sieur Clubin meant to hide 
with his ill-gotten fortune. The views from all the 



252 HIRED FURNISHED. 

windows of Hauteville House, save those facing 
the commonplace street, are scenes of enchant- 
ment. The most sluggish imagination must always 
be aroused by it. One does not wonder at Victor 
Hugo's attempts to grasp the infinite and give it out 
again to the world Victor- Hugoized ; that here he 
wrote so much, sometimes even intolerably over- 
much (as when he wrote eighty pages in description 
of the storm in " Toilers of the Sea ") of winds, of 
waves, of clouds, of mysterious ocean sounds, and 
immeasurable horizons ; one does not wonder that 
he seemed to lose consciousness of human limita- 
tions. On these islands he strove to encompass 
the ocean, the ceaseless mystery of its heaving tides, 
the sinister graces of its billows, its incomprehensi- 
ble murmur, its inimaginable groanings, its everlast- 
ing youth, its awful antiquity. The ocean seemed 
to have entered into his consciousness and made 
it sublime, but it was a mistake when he struggled 
to turn that mystery into mortal speech. 

From this crystal cage Hugo could catch 
dreamy glimpses of France, the coast almost as 
vague, almost as unearthly as the winds, the waves, 
the clouds which there gave his writings less of a 
mundane artistic form than even his admirers 
admire. One of the Doves thought he really 
had no rightful business to write of waves and 
the wind, for he had no ear whatever for 
music. 

From this glass study a narrow space leads to 
the poet's sleeping-room, an original garret of the 
English-built house. The long narrow entry is 
covered with shelves ; they in their turn are cov- 
ered with a disorderly array of ragged books. 
The guide briefly states that they are mostly old 



HAUTE V/LLE BOUSE. 253 

maps and French local histories which were used 
in writing one of Hugo's romances ; the Doves 
decide at once that it must have been " Quatre- 
vingt-treize." The poet apparently took none 
of them with him upon his return from exile, for 
their ranks seem unbroken. 

At the end of this alley is the poet's sleeping- 
place ; it is scarcely a chamber. Of all that artistic, 
and even sumptuous house, it is the meanest 
place. No servant was lodged so poorly. The 
bed is scarcely more than a man's width, and 
only a few inches from the floor. It has nothing 
in the way of bedding ; the Guernsey matron 
answers a question by information that the occu- 
pant never used sheets, but wrapped himself about 
in a coverlet and thus lay down, with his head 
upon a round block of wood which he himself 
had painted in imitation of a Japanese pillow. 
The walls of this garret are hung with faded stuffs, 
no doubt precious, but without effect under the 
guidance of the Guernsey matron. She lifts one 
or two curtains, to show how under them were 
bestowed ship-shape various literary and domestic 
conveniences, drawers for manuscripts, notes, old 
letters, all the odds and ends for which the glass 
work-room was too small. Plere also are bits of 
Guernsey chests found among the fisher folk of the 
island and metamorphosed into great doors with 
vaulted tops. Victor Hugo added to them some 
carving of his own, chevaliers on horseback point- 
ing lances, and the usual beautiful woman of fable 
and fairy, together with an utterly indescribable 
melange of other things, like a poet's confused 
dream of faraway ages. These two medieval 
doors, or two sets of doors, serve a very practical 



2 54 HIRED FURNISHED. 

purpose ; one hid the hanging clothes of the 
owner, the other his bath tub. 

From this Spartan bed he rose at three every 
morning without disturbing the household, and 
went to his writing on the wooden shelf in the 
glass annex. There he wrote until six or seven 
without, mtermission. At six or seven his coffee, 
with raw eggs, was carried up to him, after which 
he applied himself to work again till the family 
dejeuner at noon. With the hour of dejeuner his 
writing was done for the day. After that he could 
carve and paint at his own good will or wander 
among the fisher folk seeking bahuts and ideas. 
He must have found more of the former than of 
the latter, for his Guernsey folk of the " Toilers 
of the Sea " are as little like Guernsey folk, of to- 
day or any other day, as a gargoyle of Notre 
Dame de Paris is hke Victor Hugo himself, or the 
towers of Notre Dame like the divine H., which 
represents HugO; as certain admirers affected ! 



NELLIE PALMER. 255 



NELLIE PALMER. 

Nellie was a character. 

Mrs. Dove declared that Nellie was also a 
"sight." Such a costume of the biggest, horsiest 
checks that ever were sold ; the Doves even 
guessed that these checks must have been ex- 
pressly designed for Nellie's own self and no 
other. Then such a body ! — rotund as a beer- 
barrel, or rather hogshead, a big moon-face under 
straightly stiff red hair clipped close to the head, 
all set upon a pair of such ridiculously short legs 
that one wondered how Nellie ever walked at all. 
In fact NelHe seldom did walk, almost never, but 
sat enthroned high above the gaping and staring 
hosts that profited by curious eloquence and never 
forgot it. 

" You can climb down there and hexamine 
them ere ravines, ladies an' gentlemen, if you 
wanter," said Nellie, " but hi ainter goin' with yer. 
Hi don't do no climin' ; hi would n't do none to 
save this ere whole carload from tippin' hoff the 
hiland ! " 

Nobody wished to see Nellie climb. On the 
contrary, everybody would have tried to prevent 
that enormous body and those absurd legs from 
making any such tragic attempt. 

On various mornings Nellie drove up in front 
of Mrs. Bragg's, with as many people as had 
gathered for the day's excursion, the Doves being 



256 HIRED FURNISHED. 

usually the last. The Doves took seats already 
engaged, and away Nellie drove, with a clatter 
and dash of four horses that well knev/ their busi- 
ness for the day, and just how the exit from St. 
Peter Port should be made. Nellie realizes the 
dignity of that position up aloft, and holds no con- 
versation with passengers, except in monosyllables, 
till the place is reached at which the day's lesson 
begins. For not only does Nellie Palmer handle 
the ribbons of four horses with distinction, but all 
day long, while the car is en voyage, answers ques- 
tions with energy, and describes, with as much zeal 
and enthusiasm as if for the first time, gardens, 
farm-houses, churches, the residences of local 
worthies, ravines, chasms, precipices, vineries, 
*' Victer Ugo's 'arnted 'ouse " and the " Japese " 
beautifulness of a pseudo Japanese house, like a 
ten-cent paper fan amid the dignified red roofs of 
its neighborhood. How Nellie ever attained to 
the extraordinary language in which the excur- 
sion's description was done, no man can guess. 
It is not a Guernsey dialect, for nowhere else is it 
heard than on the high seat of that excursion car. 
No French, however, corrupted it, as in the case of 
the landlady of the Doves in St. Helier's. It was 
as debased English as could possibly be, yet 
Nellie proudly claimed to be of Guernsey, root 
and branch. *' They calls us ' Guernseyhasses ' 
(Guernesiais). Hime a Guernsey hass, and my 
mother were hanother ! " Nellie's pride in telling 
that prosperous farms and thrifty gardens were 
owned by " Guernsey asses " born and bred, no 
Frenchman and no Englishman, was proof that no 
kinship with other nations was for a moment to be 
suspected, at least aloud. The Doves did silently 



NELLIE PALMER. 257 

suspect that Nellie's father was an English hostler, 
whatever the mother might be. 

Nearly at the top of the hilly street Nellie rose 
with dignity and faced the company. 

"This ere, ladies an' gentlemun, is He-Lizbeth 
Collige, founded by Queen He-Lizbeth in 1563. 
You see, ladies 'n' gentlemun, the modern harchi- 
tecture reminds you of Orris Walp-Hole's carstle at 
Strawbry-Ill. Them ere battlements ain't made o' 
gingerbread ef the guide-book do say so. He- 
Lizbeth CoUige sends many students to Hoxford." 

Then, as the country road flashed away into 
the interior of the island from the steep town 
streets, — 

" Now, ladies an' gentlemun, is before you this 
beauterful road, wich at your right 'and is the 
church, an' beyind is the lightouse wich you do 
not see, has is the reason of the aziness of the 
hatmosphere." 

" Call this haziness ? " asked an excursionist. 
" I should call it a pretty good specimen of fog." 

" No, sir ! " answered Nellie, unblushing, save 
of hair. " 'T ain't no fog, it 's a 'aze ; fogses is 
wet, this ere 's dry as a wistle wich air ten miles 
from a pub." 

Nevertheless, the ladies got out their waterproofs 
and were thankful they had them. One elderly 
young woman, palpably English of complexion, 
teeth, hair, accent, and manner, in putting on her 
cloak showed a juvenile sailor-hat inscribed, " S. S. 
Chicago." Why she wore it the Doves would have 
liked very much to know ; but they never did know, 
and can only wonder to this day why on far Guern- 
sey they saw this familiar name in such unfamiliar 
companionship. 

17 



258 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Nellie was very determined that the excursion- 
ists should see the views and hobjics of hintrist, 
whether they wished or not, evidently making it a 
matter of personal ambition to preserve the fame 
already secured as the most entertaining of all the 
car-conductors, — even whether they could or not 
penetrate the mist, which so much oftener envelops 
Guernsey than Jersey or Alderney because of its 
more advanced position into the open Atlantic. 
Whenever the car stopped at a regulation spot, 
and some kept their seats for the ^aze, Nellie ex- 
postulated : — 

" Hime a-bringin' you this ere drive, ladies 'n' 
gentlemun, to see the scenry, 'n' you must see it, 
an' not be a-settin' alwiz in this ere car. Ef you 
don't never lighten this ere car you are a-goin' 
'ome to Hinglund a-knowin' nothin' of our beauter- 
ful hiland." 

Everything was 'Miour." Hour bayses, hour 
treeses, hour Haustralian blue gumses, hour bird's- 
nestses, hour Hamerican halouses, even "hour 
Japese 'ouses, wich the way they gits into 'em is 
through the roof," and our grapes (curiously enough, 
they were not grapeses) wich was raised by a gen- 
tlemun wich his name is Mr. Smith. There were 
five tons of grapes sold by this one gentlemun, 
wich 'is name is Mr. Smith, at hatepunce a pun. 
" I had a lady an' gentleman wich sat an' het them 
grapes till I sez to myself, sez hi, ' Nellie Palmer, 
you needs more 'osses to pull 'em 'ome ! ' " 

The Guernsey cows were " hours " too, and 
Nellie boasted of the greater size and coarseness 
of " hour hanimals " over those of Jersey and 
Alderney, even though those very things prove 
less purity of breed. 



NELLIE PALMER. 259 

^^ We don't shake no hiron tails ov^xhour milk," 
said Nellie. 

The early crops of beans, potatoes, and pease 
(or peases) raised on the ground space of vast 
vineries for Covent Garden were all " hours." 

Even was " hours " (" they carn't git one for no 
price hover to Jersey ") the mystic Lady, roused 
from her dreams by the music of Nellie's winding 
horn. 

"This ere Hecho, ladies 'n' gentlemun, is a 
Guernsey lady as wich got stuck on a gent as 
did n't recippercrate, so she bunked hout an' 'id 
'erself someware among them air rocks, and nobody 
ain't never seen 'er since." 

Hecho's voice had decidedly a martial ring. 
No heart-break shivered through those clarion 
tones. Rather was it an Amazonian Echo, riding 
upon the wings of the wind in the sky above, on 
beds of mist north, south, east, and west, in ocean 
caves below, Amazonian Echo answering Nellie's 
horn with fierce battle-cries and shrill calls to beat 
futile lances against her ringing breastplate and 
shield of brass. 

" The gent as did n't recippercrate is wise not to 
show himself," whispered the Doves. 

Then Nellie blew again. 

From out the silvery haze shutting from the 
enfolded island any glimpse of earth, of sea, of 
heaven, came the answer. It came to make every 
nerve thrill, every pulse throb (at least of the 
Doves), with the passion of its mystery, a passion 
of desire, of longing, and of unutterable anguish. 
It might be the inarticulate sorrow and pleading 
of passionful ages, ending perpetually with that 
long-drawn wail of despair. 



26o HIRED FURNISHED. 

Nellie showed most unlovely teeth. 

" You see, ladies 'n' gentlemun, I 'as more than 
one stick to stir Miss Hecho hup." 

A little farther on, Nellie calls attention to the 
'' Anway Rocks," near which Gull's Rock is seen, 
through the parting haze, to be completely cov- 
ered with the beautiful creatures, floating, drifting, 
darting, to remind one of electrified snowflakes ; 
or as a Dove remarked, of small-sized angels just 
let loose from their celestial school. 

Anway Rocks, " Hanway " in the Guernsey dia- 
lect, are none other than the Hanois Rocks which 
figure in Victor Hugo's " Travailleurs de la Mer." 
Upon these treacherous rocks, in 1808, the brave 
warship Boreas was lost, as many other vessels 
had been within a very few hours after leaving 
St. Peter Port. It was upon these rocks that 
Hugo's Sieur Clubin schemed to wreck La 
Durande, and from which he intended to escape 
to the guard-house on Pleinmont Point. By 
means of just such an 'aze as envelops Guernsey 
to-day the Sieur Clubin missed his reckoning, and 
wrecked the Durande on the more dangerous 
because more distant Douvres, where the octopus, 
or devil-fish, finished his iniquitous career, and 
where Gilliatt afterwards finished the devil-fish. 

" This ere 's Victer Ugoses 'arnted 'ouse," ex- 
plained Nellie. " There ain't a been no 'arnts in 
it since hi remember. Them ere ghostses o' 
Victer Ugo, he muster run um hin isself." 

Victor Hugo describes this house very distinctly, 
not in v/hat Omar Khayyam Fitzgerald called his 
^^gurgoyle" manner, yet he manages to infuse that 
description with the mysterious gloom necessary to 
the ghostly effect. Every detail Hugo mentioned 



NELLIE PALMER. 26 1 

is truly there, — the vvalled-up windows and doors, 
the nettle-grown threshold, just as he wrote. Yet 
to the Doves, the evidence of their own eyes that 
the haunted house was a common guard-house, 
absolutely unimpressive in every possible aspect, 
even to the most imagination-glamoured sight, and 
walled up for its preservation's sake, and built 
in 1 780, thus a quarter of a century after merry 
Fort Cheer, made Hugo's description forever more 
flat, stale, and unprofitable. 

" To think that this is the haunted house of 
which I read in my youth on the rocks by the old 
CHfton House," said the elder Dove. " Europe, 
longed for with a passion that consumed me, was 
then a divine mystery, in the heart of which blos- 
somed the most perfect flowers of human genius, 
of earth's aspirations, — Europe, which would lift 
and illumine even me, could my heavy feet but 
touch its poetic shores. From those Clifton 
House rocks, Guernsey was as remote and unreal 
as lost Atlantis. I scarcely knew where upon the 
earth it was, or where to look for it on the map. 
In all my dreams of voyaging on fleecy argosies, 
upon blue celestial seas, I never dreamed of reach- 
ing Guernsey, that sunless terra incognita, that 
cluster of stern rocks in perpetual twilight, where 
men talked so unlike human beings elsewhere, and 
did things no human being would elsewhere do. 
Then that octopus ! I really imagined it the real 
old theological devil in one of his numerous dis- 
guises, and I never could see any sense in Gilliatt's 
sitting on the rock till the tide covered him, after 
having slain the devil." 

" Nobody else," consented the other. " He 
did n't do it for ' sense.' None of Victor Hugo's 



262 HIRED FURNISHED. 

people have any ' sense.' They are all such sen- 
timental or romantic maniacs that the world has 
already shut the most of them up in its literary 
lunatic asylums. Such fantastic unnaturalism, 
joined to such a grandiose manner, could only 
be the fashion of a day, long or short. Already 
the man who was carried to the Pantheon by 
such a concourse of common people is half for- 
gotten. Even on the Jour des morts.^ the only 
flowers on his tomb are those ,sent by his own 
family. Few read him now for pleasure, although 
many as a duty to nineteenth century literature." 

" That air Gilliatt were a hass ! " Nellie vvas saying. 

"As for your gloomy impressions of beautiful 
Guernsey," the Dove continued, " no doubt 
your mistake is paid in kind. Even to this day 
Guernsey mothers threaten their naughty children 
with, ' I '11 send you to Boston ! ' What sort of 
imagining would those children have of you, sit- 
ting on the Clifton House rocks? After succes- 
sive bad harvests in the years 1816-1817, the 
distress became so great on the island, that many 
of the laboring classes were compelled to emigrate 
to the United States in vessels expressly fitted up 
for them. They clung together as island people 
always do when possible, and some of them gave 
a beloved name to Guernsey County, Ohio. They 
were not the first to emigrate. In an American 
paper of about 1752 was advertised, ^To be 
sold, Guernsey boys and girls, for a term of time, 
on board the sloop Two Brothers.' They evi- 
dently paid their passage by this sale of a term 
of their time. What are you laughing at?" 

The question was not unnatural, considering 
the magnitude of the other's smile. 



NELLIE PALMER. 263 

'' I was only thinking of Victor Hugo's descrip- 
tion of the bird's-nesting boys who were terrified 
by the ghostly doings within this very guard-house ; 
two Guernsey boys, you remember, and a French 
gamin. All the terror was in the Guernsey boys, 
all the bravery in the gamin. The Guernsey boys 
had never dared go near the haunted house till 
now they had a petit Franqais with them. The 
Guernsey boys were forever running away in 
fright, to be brought back by le petit Fran^ais. 
Even after the three had dared the ghosts and run 
away because nothing more was to be seen, the 
Franqais ran the fastest, not because he was afraid 
(perish the thought !), but because he was French ! 
Then don't you remember when we re-read the 
' Travailleurs de la Mer ' the other day how we 
laughed at some Guernseyman's retort upon 
V. H. ? When La Durande struck upon the rocks 
one of the six passengers fainted (the same who, 
in eighteen hundred and /ze/^/z/y-something, talked 
with an American bible-distributor of William H. 
Seward and Stephen A. Douglas). When La 
Durande struck, Victor Hugo wrote, ' Le touriste 
s'e'tait dvanoui ; ' over against it some reader had 
pencilled, ' A Frenchman / / / ' " 

" How different was Chateaubriand's story," 
remarked a Dove. " Returning from America in 
1 79 1, in a vessel manned half by Frenchmen, half 
by Americans, they were so beaten and buffeted 
and driven from their course that they got 
between Guernsey and Alderney, near, if not act- 
ually in that frightful 'Swinge.' All gave them- 
selves up for lost, except one or two Americans. 
When the Frenchman at the vv^heel gave up and 
let the vessel drift, one of the Americans took the 



264 HIRED FURNISHED. 

wheel and brought the vessel round. The French- 
men were all shouting a prayer to Notre Dame 
de Bon Secours, some of the scared Protestants 
joining with them, but not the American at the 
wheel." 

'* Tortevale church," Nellie was saying, and the 
Doves remembered that Tortevale was the very 
village where Sieur Clubin had so virtuous a repu- 
tation. "Tortevale church, built in 18 16, on the 
place ware used to was be St. Mary de Tourte- 
valle in 1055, before hus Guernsey hasses con- 
quered Hinglund ! " 

The car laughs ; Nellie laughs too at this spon- 
taneous recognition of the fact of a departure from 
the legitimate discourse, and continues proudly, 
" Said to be the hugliest church in Europe." 

So it must be, with its ungainly martello towers 
and broken spire, the very ugliest. It was built at 
the same dreary period of ecclesiastical art, or 
not-art, that characterless St. Prig's was built on 
Sark. It took the place of an ancient one built 
in 1 130, upon the site of the earher one of 1055, 
by Philip de Carteret in fulfilment of a vow made 
while struggling with death in the sea. Yet there 
are many, many times when this unbeautiful church 
becomes of almost unearthly loveliness. Its towers 
seem shaped from the rainbow and set as a sign 
of God's promise against the sky ; its spire is of 
pearl, its walls of alabaster, its architecture like 
the clouds of the radiant heavens. Thus it is to 
the sailor far away upon the water, whose keen 
gaze joyfully distinguishes Tortevale church before 
even so much as a shadow of the island is seen. 
Until 1862, when the Hanois light was placed on 
the fatal rocks, the spire was used for a beacon. 



NELLIE PALMER, 265 

thus a star of hope to many a storm-tossed 
Guernsey mariner making way homeward from 
far shores. 

" Hobserve, ladies 'n' gentlemun, our fisher- 
mun's 'ouses. You see them ere garrits stuffed so 
tight wich the seaweed is a runnin' hout ? That 
ere seaweed we calls vraic. Hit 's the fishermun's 
cookin' wood, he don't hav no hother fires. The 
vraic in the garrit keeps the cold hout hall winter, 
then it gits burnt wich the hashes makes our per- 
taterses grow. Hour baker's ovenses is all 'eated 
with vraic." 

On all the Channel Islands the vraic is an im- 
portant harvest. The gatherings are twice a year, 
during certain days (after the highest tides) ap- 
pointed by each island's legislature. During the 
vraic harvests the shores are covered with carts 
and people, the town and village streets are scat- 
tered with straggling branches and twigs of the 
sea's harvest, the air is pungent with briny odors. 
The harvesting takes on a festive aspect, — a pleas- 
ant picnic quality ; groups of families eat and 
drink together on the rocks, and a certain cake 
known as " vraic cake " is much in evidence. 
Hundreds of islanders have no other fuel, and 
what they do not burn as fuel they burn expressly 
for the ashes, which are sold by the bushel, usually 
about 9^. only, for fertilizing purposes. To think 
of the time and toil expended in securing a bushel 
of ashes ! The Channel Island farm-carts usually 
make a spring toilet for the vraic harvest, being 
freshly painted blue, the color considered lucky, — 
a superstition left from ancient Cathohc days, when 
it was the Virgin's favorite color. A white horse 
is greatly prized with these blue carts ; for how 



266 HIRED FURNISHED. 

could the Goddess Luck fail to favor the Ma- 
donna's livery? 

" Hobserve, ladies 'n' gentlemun, this ere ruined 
chapel of St. Hapoline as wich his license to 
build were granted by Richard Second in 1394. 
You can henter, ladies 'n' gentlemun, in a gitten 
the key as wich keeps the hold woman hoppizite. 
She don't speak no Hinglish, so I tells you the 
whole of the 'istry. Hunnerds 'n' hunnerds o' years 
that ere chapel was delappetatid 'n' used for a 
stable. The 'osses died so fast they gives it hup ; 
the hold saint wich howns the chapel did n't want 
no 'osses, so he 'arnted 'em to death. Beastly 
shame ! " 

The Doves got the key and examined the 
strange old frescos — ghostly things as if seen at 
the end of a long vista of dark centuries — at their 
leisure, during the unnecessarily long halt for 
luncheon. " These always long halts of excur- 
sion cars are designed to persuade the excursion- 
ist that the drive he pays for is twenty-five miles, 
instead of only twelve, — a day's drive, rather than 
one to be naturally done in three hours," re- 
marked a Dove. 

" We could just as well have walked," agreed 
the Doves, "only, in that case we should never 
have known NeUie." 

Never known Nellie ! The Dove-like reason 
tottered on its throne at the bare suggestion ! 

"We missed Creux Madi in the fog," said a 
Dove, reading a guide-book. "A great pity. 
My Ward, Lock, and Bowden says, ' The Creux 
Madi is of magnificent proportions. No traveller 
should miss seeing it. There is a tradition de- 
voutly believed by some of the islanders that a 



NELLIE PALMER. 267 

subterranean passage runs from the cave to the 
centre of the island.' " 

" Pity indeed ! " said the other, also reading. 
" My Black's guide-book says, ' Creux Madi is 
an uninteresting cavity at the base of a cliff 200 
feet long, 50 feet wide, and 60 high, formed by 
the decomposition of a softer vein of rock, v^hich 
has entered the granite at right angles.' " 

'' In a multitude of counsellors is wisdom," they 
agreed. " But when you have only two coun- 
sellors who disagree, how know which has the 
wisdom? Moral, never carry more than one 
guide-book." 

They made the discovery that Guernsey folk 
are more literal than Jersey ; that is, if one single 
fact proves a law, as many travellers seem to 
think, — even as the Frenchman did, over a two 
hours' excursion to Folkestone, who wrote after- 
wards, " All English children have red hair." 
After their ferreting about the neighborhood 
while the rest were at lunch they returned to 
the hotel with just time, and no more, for a com- 
forting cup of tea. 

" A cup of tea," said Mr. Dove, carelessly, to a 
waiter as they took their seats at a little table in 
the tearoom, among other tea tables surrounded 
by some of their fellow excursionists, all with china 
teapots of the same size and pattern before them. 

''Tea 6^.," read Mrs. Dove from the wall. 
"In this at least the two islands are of one ac- 
cord, even if Jersey does elect its judges by 
the rate payer direct, and Guernsey by douzeniers 
representing the rate payers. Tea dd. is common 
to all the Channel Islands. We get a good deal 
for our shilling." 



268 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Here the waiter appeared. He set one single 
cup of steaming tea between the two. '' Sixpence, 
sir," he said, 

'' What do you mean by one cup when I 
ordered tea for two?" 

"You said a cup, sir," meekly replied the man. 

" Bring at once two teapots of tea, two cups 
and two saucers, two spoons, sugar, a milk jug, 
two small plates, and one of bread and butter." 

''Yes sir," answered the man with cheerful 
alacrity. 

" Lemme see if henny's missin'," said Nellie, 
after luncheon, mounting the box and counting 
the excursionists. " Ware 's them air Jersey 
trippers ? " 

"Jersey trippers," indeed ! It was for this, 
then, that NeUie all day long had refrained from 
any fling at the sister island, save once inadver- 
tently to remark, ''' Hus Guernsey folkses is more 
haristocratic as what Jersey is." 

Jersey trippers ! 

" Here we are," said the Doves, meekly. 

During luncheon time the fog had lifted. Un- 
fortunately the remainder of the drive was over 
the least picturesque part of the island, — pictu- 
resque, that is, in pinnacled chffs, splintered rocks, 
and chasms, ravines, abysses, and caves beaten 
by the restless sea, the glimpses of rnagic gar- 
dens, radiant with subtropical flowers through 
ancient gateways of grave manor-houses, many 
the thatched cottages, quaint churches, and what 
stirred Nellie's eloquence most thoroughly, exten- 
sive vineries. 

" Hobserve, ladies 'n' gentlemun, that ere vinery 
as wich air atop a cross. That air were once a 



NELLIE PALMER. 269 

church. Hus Guernsey folkses ain't a-vvantin' so 
many churches as them fellers 'ad afore us was 
born ; we don't tumble inter the hocean an' vow 
big things to git hourselfs hout ! We gits hour 
savin' cheaper; 'n' puts vines instidder halters." 

As the party dashed brilliantly into St. Peter's 
Port, the Doves again asked of each other, " Why 
is this big hostler given a feminine name ; why is 
he not Pete or Bill ? " 

" Cos it 's my name, sir, given to me by ray 
sponsers in batism," Nellie was answering an 
excursionist. 



2/0 HIRED FURNISHED. 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY, ITS 
PEOPLE, AND ITS COWS. 

"Alderney ! Wonder how long you will stay 
there ? " 

A suspicious unanimity was in these words. 
The Doves were not long in discovering that 
nobody thought they could remain long where, as 
everybody said, there was nothing to see, nothing 
to do, and nothing to eat. But they took into 
consideration that this was told them on Guern- 
sey, and Guernsey has a sisterly way of under- 
valuing all the other Channel Islands. They were 
not to be discouraged from visiting Alderney ; 
rather their determination was strengthened by in- 
formation that nothing was there but cows and 
soldiers, and no man (or woman) ever ventured 
there without wishing he had not. 

At times, from Guernsey, they realized that fail- 
ing to reach that nebulous vision now faintly form- 
ing into a pale cloud-shape upon the farthest line 
of sea and sky, now melting utterly away, they 
should surely die. That the same result attended 
the tragedy of not seeing it, they did not consider 
important enough to draw attention. That bit of 
film on the horizon, to be hiddei by a thimble's 
disc, drew them with the inevitable fascination of 
mystery and remoteness. When by the most 
powerful effort they could dimly descry it, their 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2/1 

very souls uprose with entreaty to be let loose to 
their own wild wills. When with the very most 
powerful effort not the filmiest hint of a film could 
be discovered, they concluded to buy their tickets 
on the way home. 

Twice a week from their pleasant windows 
they watched the Little Courier with laughter. 
For the Little Courier reminded them of a brisk 
schoolboy running home from school and the 
post-office with the day's mail. It raced across 
their windows with might and main, an hour or so 
after the large packets had arrived from England. 
Until the great packet arrived, the Little Courier 
would not budge an inch, and Alderney might cry 
in vain for its food and its friends, so long as the 
Lynx, the Antelope, the Gazelle were delayed in 
the Channel. Its steam was up and everything 
ready for departure the moment passengers (if 
any there were), mails, and packages could be 
transferred. Thus it often kicked up its little 
heels and capered across the windows of the 
Doves an hour or more before the still unloading 
majestic English steamer took up its stately way 
to Jersey. Alderney is very much out in the cold, 
and must continue there so long as two sea- 
voyages divide it from England. Its ambition is 
for a packet direct to England, but the day seems 
far that it will have one. 

Alderney is the Cinderella of the Channel Is- 
lands, for whom no fairy godmother has yet 
appeared. The other islands think and speak of 
her as a little sister in the ashes ; very few Jersey 
people have ever visited her, and most Guernsey 
people only on a day's excursion. 

But then, very few Jersey people even have 



2/2 HIRED FURNISHED. 

ever seen St. Peter Port, the capital of Guern- 
sey, except from the steamer-landing, although 
they cannot go to England without stopping at 
the port of Guernsey from one hour to two. The 
people of all the islands are extremely proud of 
themselves as The Channel Islands, virtual re- 
publics under royal protection, but otherwise they 
have very little interest in one another. Away 
from home — in America, for instance — all Chan- 
nel Islanders embrace each other as brothers ; just 
as Chicago and Boston are Americans abroad, but 
distinctly Chicago and Boston at home. 

Alderney is three miles long by one and a half 
wide, a lofty rock covered with grass and rough 
weeds. It has not a native tree and but few 
planted ones, and as the Doves saw it at the end 
of a horrible three hours of boiling channel from 
Guernsey it was anything but promising. The 
steamer's departure from Guernsey had been tele- 
graphed (almost the first use of the magic wires 
that united long outcast Alderney to the rest of the 
world), and the whole island of Alderney watched 
them as they struggled past the lonely Casquets and 
now tumbled among the breakers of the terrible 
" Swinge." 

This " swinge," by the way, accounts in some 
part for Alderney's long isolation from the rest of 
the world. Before the days of steam-packet 
communication this foaming interval before the 
harbor could be reached was dangerous to vessels, 
except with expert pilots on board. It was not 
only dangerous, but imagine the soul and body 
anguish of tumbling and tossing, soaring and 
sinking, for an hour or two in this elemental 
churn ! Now the struggle of twenty minutes to 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2/3 

half an hour by steam over those sunken rocks 
and mad eddies and currents is bad enough in all 
conscience. Surely, nobody with a stomach ever got 
away from Alderney who ever reached it by sail ! 

Ten passengers were on board the little steamer; 
four only of them bound for Alderney. The 
others, Guernsey people, were going past Alder- 
ney to Cherbourg, thence on to Paris, — the usual 
way of reaching the continent from both Alderney 
and Guernsey. Jersey's way is nearer than this, 
her way to Paris shorter than those of all her sister 
isles, even though Alderney lies nearer the coast 
of France. Jersey people cross over to Gran- 
ville or Saint-Malo, lower down the coast. 

Among the passengers is an Alderney woman, 
perhaps a milliner and familiar with the " Swinge " 
from frequent crossings over to Guernsey shops 
and fashions. No sooner was Guernsey dim than 
she sat flatly down upon the floor, with eyes tightly 
closed and back against a mast. Nothing roused 
her; she might have been dead for any sign she 
gave, even when the military man and his com- 
panions exclaimed at the fairy-like architecture of 
the terrible Casquets, those fatal rocks upon which 
many a ship has gone to pieces and many a soul 
to its doom. Not even did she open her eyes 
when the steward pointed out the rock Ortac, and 
the Americans told all they knew of it. It was 
once believed that Saint Maclou came to this bare 
rock at times. Many ancient mariners affirmed 
that they had seen him there reading a book. 
For this reason it was a custom among fishers and 
sailors to say a prayer or two and do a number 
of propitiatory genuflections whenever they sailed 
within danger nearness of Ortac. After a while 

iS 



2/4 HIRED FURNISHED. 

it was discovered that Saint Maclou had never 
been on Ortac at all, but a devil, one of the minor 
devils of the great crew of devils, and had made 
himself appear for centuries as the Saint without 
detection, thus to receive the prayers of mortals. 
Victor Hugo tells this story in his *' Travailleurs de 
la Mer." Apparently that devil took fright at sight 
of the new order of devil, puffing and snorting 
over the waves ; for nobody hears of him now. 

The milliner never opened her eyes to see 
whether saint or devil had possession of Ortac. 

"Are you quite comfortable?" asked one of the 
Doves of the other, with suspicious anxiety. " Do 
you wish to go nearer the side of the boat ? " 

"A pretty question to ask!" she murmured. 
" I must die at my post unless that dignified mili- 
tary man takes his dreadful gaze from off my face." 

The military man must have been a colonel at 
least. He was tall and gray, with a fierce mous- 
tache and eye, a firmly set mouth, and a com- 
plexion sallowed by tropic suns. In the very 
heart of the swinge^ that horrible, horrible swinge 
which mixed sea and sky into such an elemental 
mess that one could not decide which to cling to, 
the military man stood fiercely erect, staring 
fiercely upon Mrs. Dove. 

"What/> the matter?" she thought. "Do I 
resemble his long lost love ? " 

With stern eyes still upon her, the military man 
made two fierce strides towards her. 

"The other side, sir, the other side ! " called the 
steward. 

Then that smiling steward confided to Mrs. 
Dove's ghastly smile, — 

"Gentlemen do make such a horation w'en 
they are hill." 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2/5 

" Why does he not sing to ' Our Lady of Suc- 
cor,' " whispered the American. '^ It must have 
been just about here that our own prayerless coun- 
tryman took the hehn in 1791, no doubt at the 
bidding of Notre Dame, and in answer to that 
shouted prayer in French. 

The milliner never opened her eyes. 

A Guernsey lady upon leaving St. Peter Port 
had been heard assuring another that she was 
never sea-sick in her life, never ! She had crossed 
the North Sea many times and voyaged to India 
as well as to America, the very worst voyage of all, 
with never a shudder or qualm. This lady was 
one of the tender-hearted sort, in spite of her stout 
stomach, one of the large-eyed, slim-waisted, weak- 
voiced kind, with high, stainless foreheads, and no 
chin to speak of, that were fashionable before 
Rossetti painted, and Burne-Jones set Love among 
ruins, or Du Maurier made Punch a drawing-room 
of strong-chinned English beauty. She was one of 
the ministering-angel-when-pain-and-anguish-wring- 
the-brow kind, who smooth Pillows and wipe Brows 
whenever they find a chance, — even though some- 
times wiping and smoothing the wrong way. 

Just as the steamer was about to start a party of 
French women came on board with loud weeping. 
Only one of them was to leave Guernsey ; the 
others had come to say good-bye to a girl of six- 
teen or seventeen returning to her own family in 
France. She was a moon-faced peasant, probably 
a farm-hand. She was returning in great trouble 
and fear, not in the least lessened by the boisterous 
lamentations about her, for she was returning not 
alone. A tightly rolled bundle, stiff as a block of 
wood, but from which goggled two watery eyes, 



2^6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

was passed from one to the other of the women, 
each receiving and passing it on with intensified 
howls. 

The heart of the much-travelled lady was deeply 
touched by the spectacle of so much woe. She 
buried herself in the waiUng group in the steerage 
and learned the whole story. 

The women went ashore with a wail, the home- 
returning girl answered with another, her eyes 
swollen, her face distorted almost out of human 
semblance. 

" The poor creature says she is always frightfully 
sea-sick," said the lady, coming into the first-class 
part of the boat with a bundle, which she tilted and 
joggled in a most amateur manner. " I am never, 
never ill, so I am going to take this poor ten-days- 
old baby down into the cabin with me. The 
wretched girl is terrified almost out of her senses 
at the prospect of meeting her father. He does 
not know about this baby." 

Sea-sick ! 

Indeed the girl did not wait for the sea. The 
wheel had made scarce three revolutions, the wails 
on the pier were still audible, when her clamor 
changed from weeping to a variety of utterly in- 
describable noises, amid which that of weeping 
was least. Nobody had thought of giving up, when 
her perfectly unrestrained uproar filled all the 
space between bow and stern, and rose above the 
flag. 

" How fortunate that poor baby is safe," ob- 
served Mrs. Dove. " She is such a lawless young 
animal I think she would throw it overboard." 

"Best place for it," replied the other. Which 
Mrs. Dove could not deny. 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2J'J 

All the way the girl mon-dieued in every possible 
animal tone, from wailing cat's to shrieking hyena's. 
Then the waves washed over the steerage, and 
the kindly steward lifted her forward among the 
first-class passengers. Evidently the change was 
for the worse, or at least she thought so, for — 

" If I dared move, I would go downstairs," 
murmured Mrs. Dove; "this is intolerable." 

Some little time later, the steward came and 
stood between the sightless milliner and Mrs. Dove, 
three feet from the tumultuous young mother. 

"A lady downstairs is frightfully ill," he said. 
"She begs anybody who can to relieve her of the 
baby she took into the cabin with her." 

" Pas moi, pas moi, mon Dieu ! " remarked the 
young mother, in the most human voice they had 
ever heard from her, then immediately recom- 
menced her menagerie din. 

With a somersault to strike the solemn stars, 
were any visible at high noon, the Little Courier 
bounds into Braye Harbour, and the milliner opens 
her eyes. " I keep them shut that my mouth 
won't spring open," she remarked to Mrs. Dove. 

The lady with the tender heart comes up to 
the air, looking like death. 

" It was that dreadful baby," she explains. " I 
think it has never been washed since it was born. 
If I had been on deck I should have thrown it 
overboard." 

They go ashore, and then stand for a few 
moments stick-stock-still, merely to enjoy the 
heavenliness of firm earth beneath their feet, in- 
stead of alternately sea and sky. A score or so 
of people stand about the pier, the most of them 



278 HIRED FURNISHED. 

brought there only by curiosity, although one 
woman, the Doves were sure, was she to whom they 
had written concerning lodgings, and who could 
be brought to name no other terms than " satis- 
factory." As "satisfactory" is an idea with two 
faces, as it might look to lodger or to landlady, they 
had not answered her last letter. Now as they saw 
her keen inspection of the Courier's passengers, 
they assumed an expression of joy, to meet a wel- 
come among waiting friends, and passed her by. 
But first they watch the Little Courier unload, — 
Captain Whale, bound in the usual blue and gold, 
doing the major part. Almost everything seems 
for " The Canteen." Eggs, onions, potatoes, cases 
of bottles, "garden-sass," all go the same way. 
Even the mail bag is opened upon the pier, and 
the red-headed red-coated soldiers who take away 
the garrison letters leave but a shrunk bag behind. 
Alderney, like Gibraltar, is chiefly a garrison rock, 
every third person a soldier. The larger portion 
of the remainder are the descendants of English 
and Irish laborers, brought here for ill-fated Eng- 
lish government works, abandoned in 1847 ; some 
are quarrymen and stone cutters from France, 
while a mere fraction are of ancient Alderney 
families, to this day speaking among themselves a 
queer jargon of mixed English and mediaeval 
French. When they speak English, however flu- 
ently, their accent is strongly foreign. 

St. Anne, the capital, has two hamlets for neigh- 
bors, both low by the water's edge, while St. Anne 
is enthroned on Alderney's summit. One of the 
hamlets has a poor French Catholic church, while 
St. Anne has a Protestant church, a gift from a 
former owner of the island, huge enough to house 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2/9 

every islander. What in the world Alderney 
wanted with such misplaced grandeur and mag- 
nificence remains a puzzle, considering that the 
Salvationists have obtained a foothold there and 
other dissenters are not few. The only other 
large building, save forts, is a dynamite factory, 
sent to Alderney, doubtless, to get it out of the 
way. 

They climbed a long hill to St. Anne's. It 
seemed an utterly deserted town, although a very 
modern one, and nothing ghostly or plague- 
stricken about it. Neither is it in the slightest 
degree picturesque, but resembling the newest 
suburb of an English manufacturing town, a sub- 
urb of working people, not of noiiveaux riches. 
As the Doves pass through the one principal 
street, every door is closed, even of shops ; every 
shop shade down. " Is everybody asleep ? " they 
wonder. 

At the rickety little shop inside a slovenly en- 
closure where the guide-book had bid inquire for 
lodgings, a dirty, deaf old woman told that her 
son was at dinner, and could not be disturbed. 
No business signs of any consequence attract the 
eye. The whole island of 2000 inhabitants is 
en famille^ everybody knows the contents of every 
shop, hence no need of window displays or adver- 
tisements. Everybody, too, knows the contents of 
every clothes-press and chest, — hkewise of every 
larder, for the butcher shops are open only on 
the days of the steamer's arrival, and everybody 
knows just what the steamer brought. 

By a bright urchin's aid they manage to secure 
lodgings on " Blaggud Corner," in one of the few 
ancient houses of the best class, with the mullion 



28o HIRED FUKNISHED.^ 

windows peculiar to Alderney, and walls like a 
fortress. " Blackguard " is scarcely an attractive 
name for corner lodgings, although corners are 
fine coigns of vantage for viewing a town or island 
from a window. The blackguards, however, were 
not very black ; they saw but two or three at a 
time, and they " guarded " only after working- 
hours. The junction of two roads where this old- 
time house stood always had one corner at least 
sheltered from the wind. It might be the corner 
of the dingy little general store, the corner of the 
dingy inn, or their own two corners, where idlers 
leaned and smoked and exchanged the stirring 
news of the rock. Twice a week the idlers can 
talk of larger news, of falling empires, and dying 
kings ; but ordinarily, to whichever corner they 
chng as the wind comes from English meadows 
and hedgerows, or over the continent from Rus- 
sian steppes, or up from African deserts, they 
discuss whether they like pork best or veal, or the 
benefit of an onion diet over one of cabbage. 
Perhaps the conversation is not much more inspir- 
ing among the upper circles, if one may judge 
from the quality of intellectual and spiritual 
pabulum furnished from the pulpit of the great 
church. 

For Alderney has its ^'^ hupper suckle " of 
course. It consists of a few officers' families, 
plain everyday-looking people, the rector's family, 
a bachelor curate with an enormous lisp, and a 
few feminine odds and ends, with no particular 
object in life except to go to church, to play golf 
and tennis, always with the same partners, to dance 
occasionally, always with the same few partners, 
and now and then to picnic among the coarse 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 28 1 

weeds. To work among the poor, to re-create 
the slums, they have no chance, lacking poor and 
slums ; they cannot even cycle, lacking space. No 
library, no clubs, no theatres, no shops, no work, 
no real conversation, no change of faces, no news 
(except telegraphic) from the world oftener than 
twice a week, except a short season in summer, — 
if all things else fail to drive them to madness, the 
puerile drivel of their athletic curate ought to 
do it. 

The Americans heard him for the first time the 
Sunday Mrs. Dove waxed indignant at sight of 
the surphced choir. The boys looked quite 
angelic, and opened their mouths as widely as 
boys on a choric frieze. Out of those open 
mouths seemed to come angelic music, — sinless 
voices, newly come from the skies, chanting praises 
to an unforgotten Father. 

" Humbug ! " nudged Mrs. Dove. " Do you 
see all those girls in profane raiment hidden 
behind the organ ? They are doing all this angelic 
choiring." 

The drivel of the curate was such that the stran- 
gers did not wonder that the rector removed him- 
self as far from it as decency and the chancel would 
allow. This curate has a salary of $700 from an 
endowment fund provided by the giver of the 
church. It is more than he could ever get in 
America, where flocks choose their own shepherds, 
even their own sheep dogs, and have neither forced 
upon them as in England. The Doves wondered 
what this big bachelor curate has to say!of "Jer- 
sey hookers ; " for Jersey hookers let him slip 
every Jersey hook, and land in desolate Alderney 
still unhooked. Jersey girls are most unamiably 



282 HIRED FURNISHED. 

named " hookers " by the spinsterhood of the 
other islands, for the reason that so few curates 
and officers ever leave Jersey unattached. It is 
not agreeable to Alderney girls, when a regiment 
or a parson is moved over from the principal 
island of the group, to see the young officers or the 
parson spending sq much time on the point of 
land nearest to Jersey, scarcely moving his glass 
from the portion of the horizon where it lies. 
The spinsterhood guess why these interesting 
faces are turned away from them, even if they 
do not know ; hence the curling lips which speak 
of " Jersey hookers." 

In windy, dull Alderney, the Americans found 
lodgings dearer than upon the gayer Channel 
Islands, even though house rents are extremely 
cheap. Forty dollars a year will hire a comfort- 
able house, one hundred and fifty a great one al- 
most suitable for an hotel. The reason of the 
dearness of lodgings is the scarcity of servants. 
Neither French nor English servants are wilHng to 
live on a rock two or three hours from everywhere, 
even in calm weather, and with that devilish Swinge 
between. Especially is a small rock dangerous 
to serving-maids, when a garrison is upon it, for 
though she be cold as ice and pure as snow, an 
English garrison always throws a taint of suspicion 
upon a girl's reputation. Neither will the island- 
born girls remain. From Alderney on clear days 
the glass roofs of Guernsey vineries, and her win- 
dows, blaze in the sun and lure Alderney girls 
away into the splendid mystery beyond the Swinge 
unto the larger isle which to them seems the world. 
Sark and Alderney furnish Guernsey largely with 
servants, Sark and Alderney go without. In the 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 283 

Guernsey newspapers one may read piteous ap- 
peals from Alderney for cooks, nurses, and general 
servants. 

On the other side of Alderney, only nine miles 
distant, looms a projection of France, a vision to 
tempt any untravelled imagination. Between the 
two how can any girl remain on narrow Alderney 
unless she be entirely without imagination ? Then, 
entirely without that quickening spark, of what 
use is she as a serving maid ? " Our Alderney 
girls prefer to join the Salvationists and bang 
tambourines," said Monsieur Duplain. So they 
somersault away over the Swinge, and Monsieur 
and Madame Duplain must give up taking lodgers 
and offer Blaggud-Corner House, nicely furnished, 
for rent at a pound a week, because they have no 
daughters of their own and can hire no other 
man's. 

Their sitting-room on Blaggud Corner prettily 
furnished in old fashions and with ecclesiastical 
windows, had a library of four volumes. One of 
them was a French translation of " Little Women," 
one a gaudy French gift book, one " Stepping 
Heavenward," in English, the other Aldrich's 
" Story of a Bad Boy," in French. Some natural 
curiosity concerning the latter and its adaptation 
to the juvenile Gallic mind, led to the discovery 
that the chapter on Tom's sweethearts was 
expunged. 

The bedrooms were like wax in neatness, with 
inside wooden shutters, as had all the house. One 
sunk to rest beneath a lofty canopy with solemn 
tester, and beneath soft homespun blankets, quite 
under the imaginative impression that one's knee 
breeches or hoop-petticoats decorate high-backed 



284 HIRED FURNISHED. 

chairs and that one's hair still retains the daytime 
powder. George the Third is king, unless indeed 
hideous George the Second still holds the sceptre ; 
and over the water a certain colony has increased 
too rapidly for its own good or indeed for any- 
body else's, and must be taught a sharp lesson or 
two. 

Alderney does not invite to many walks, having 
so few to offer. It has not much in the way of 
scenery, for the sea seen too near is not scenery. 
Whatever is looked upon must be on the gazer's 
own level, or else below it. Ravines, chasms, 
cliffs and boulders, however rent by tempest, and 
by gnawing and tearing waves, are much less im- 
pressive to the imagination when looked down 
upon instead of with eyes upturned. So much is 
in mere bodily position and relation that man 
never feels his superiority so much, as the final and 
greatest work of nature, as when he looks down 
upon her creations. So on Alderney, where so 
much of the coast is entirely inaccessible except 
to indefatigable gulls, who chatter and skim 
water and air as if gulldom were the universe, 
nothing whatever cheats the senses and imagina- 
tion with a vision of idealized things. On Sark, 
an island of the same size, one may find the light 
that never was on land or sea, the dream-forms of 
countries beyond the moon, but not here. The 
plateau is ugly, most of it coarse pasture land, and 
over it the wind blows continually till the rough 
furze, which elsewhere grows to tall bushes, here 
clings with its prickly fingers desperately to the 
ground and becomes a creeping vine. A struggle 
among Alderney furze is as much as a Dove's life 
is worth. Such walks as are described in the 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 285 

guide-books receive all the attention they merit. 
The paths run along the island's edge that the 
only interest the island possesses may be looked 
down upon. The paths are the width only of 
two human feet ; parties must walk in single file 
or become either tangled in the clinging furze, or 
fall upon the rock below. The guide-books 
kindly warn tlie stranger of this last danger, and 
note the places where there is nothing but a thin 
layer of earth and stones below the turf. The 
Doves remarked the unanimously extreme caution 
with which strangers turned inland upon the furze 
at these indicated places, and left tlie path to more 
practised island feet. Also they smilingly remarked 
upon the dutifully trampled spots, islands of 
bareness in surrounding russet-green, where the 
guide-books had remarked upon something to be 
observed. 

" Elizabeth's Earl of Essex bought the whole 
island for five thousand dollars," remarked a 
Dove ; " what do you imagine he wanted it 
for?" 

" Can't," answered the other, " unless it be 
true that he intended to carry his royal mistress 
off and hide her here till she consented to marry 
him." 

Upon Alderney one has the sensation of being 
upon an enormous ship, where life and the out- 
look are quite as monotonous as they always are 
on a long voyage, and where one is almost equally 
apart from the world. 

On Sunday afternoon the Doves attended a 
meeting of the Salvation Army. Before going 
with Zilpha, the little maid, they had remarked 
from their windows- unusual animation round Blag- 



286 HIRED FURNISHED. 

gud Corner. All the population of Alderney 
seemed darting past Blaggud Corner, swift-footed, 
because of the cooling wind, and burdened with 
something hidden beneath a cloth. Earlier in 
the day the Doves had watched much the same 
island ceremony, although then the burdens were 
smaller and the feet less fleet. Among the noon- 
tide bearers was an elderly man to whom English, 
they knew, was a foreign language. His English 
was as fluent as their own, but every word un- 
Englishy pronounced. He was of the ancient 
Alderney race, now almost extinct, had never been 
in England in his hfe, although once in France, 
and had taken a wife from Sark whom he had met 
in Guernsey, and whose English was as fluent and 
accent as foreign as his own. Far away in the world 
somewhere they had a son, they knew not where ; 
perhaps he was in America, that strange far 
country where so many roving souls disappear in 
the western clouds. They had not heard from him 
for years, yet how cheerful they both were, how 
ready with pleasant tales and merry anecdotes ! 
Mrs. Dove pondered deeply and long that a mother 
could remain on a bit of rock in the surging sea, 
that she could hear the loud winds hasting from far 
countries to farther ones, that she could endure the 
distant shining of the stars, the cold sadness of the 
moon, that morning did not torture her, that even- 
ing did not appal, that she could relate laughing 
histories, that she did not beg her weeping way from 
port to port, from land to land, till she found her 
son, or till she reached the final Country of us all. 

" But you see, raadame, not every woman spells 
son SUN as you do," explained her companion. 

Ten minutes later, when the hot and savory leg 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 28/ 

of mutton graced their table a deux, they under- 
stood what their landlord had brought from the 
baker's under that secretive cloth. " Our beans 
are baked at the baker's every Saturday night the 
same as the mutton, and we bring them away in 
the morning," explained Zilpha. 

"So do many in America," said Mrs. Dove. 
" Many Americans, in a part called New England, 
also eat beans on Saturday night." 

The possibiHty of such a forestalling of Sunday's 
breakfast had never occurred to the little Alderney 
maid. She opened wide her eyes to exclaim, — 

" How droll ! " 

Afterwards they heard her tell the strange story 
to the landlady, whose comment was, — 

" How droll 1 " 

"Reminds me of an occurrence of my youth," 
discoursed the elder Dove. " Once upon a time 
our New England minister preached to an audience 
of baked-bean eaters upon the Sabbath-breaking of 
having one's beans cooked at a bakery. The 
sermon made a great uproar, as may be supposed. 
All the week the congregation discussed it with 
more or less heat ; for New England's Sunday- 
morning beans, you know, are not to be insulted 
by any man, however sacred his office. When 
the congregation gathered together the next Sun- 
day morning, behold, the church steps were 
thickly strewn with raw beans, as much as to say 
to the Reverend Mr. Langworthy, ' Take your 
beans like cattle.' Of course that made more 
uproar ; but the culprits were not discovered, not 
even at the third bean-storm, which arose in the 
congregation the following spring, by which time 
the society had become generally known as the 



288 HIRED FURNISHED. 

' Holy Beaners.' The third commotion was when 
all the ground space about the Church of the 
Holy Beaners sprouted thick with beans, and con- 
tinued to sprout for weeks, from those swept away 
from the church steps the autumn before." 

After dinner to a little court apart from the 
narrow street, where the " Harmy " held a preli- 
minary service. The " Harmy " consisted of a 
captain, a Heutenant, and perhaps a score of 
privates. The two officers were rustic English 
maids, who lived on their pay of ten shillings a 
week apiece, and tea'd every day with the privates, 
thus saving tea and fire. They were blooming dairy- 
maids with tremendous singing voices, or what 
passed for such, and equal power in thumping 
tambourines, especially as contribution-boxes. 
This very Sunday was their last on Alderney, 
where they had been for a year. Their marching 
orders had come ; by the next steamer their suc- 
cessors would arrive and they depart, probably 
for Jersey ; they did not yet know their destination. 

The services began with music by the band, 
'^ said to be the best Salvation band in the 
Channel Islands," patriotic litde Zilpha declared, 
and prayer by the band-master, a round-eyed, 
flabby-mouthed, unintelligent looking youth, whose 
daily business was blacksmithing. Then came 
prayer by a decent working-man, in which was 
pathetic reference to the departure of " thy saints." 
"Saints," as applied to those chubby-cheeked girls, 
would have made the Doves smile had they not 
set their faces as adamant against any such lev- 
ity. The pathetic reference was expected, for 
almost before it assumed any form at all the cap- 
tain assiduously applied herself to her handkerchief. 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 289 

But not for long did the dingy, crumpled thing dry 
her tearfulness, for her lieutenant gently insinuated 
it away to apply to her own. Then the captain's 
sorrow required it, then the heutenant's again; so, 
to and fro^ backwards and forwards, the unseemly 
rag travelled, till those meek Doves, peacefullest 
of their kind, yearned to charge the whole army 
and force clean handkerchiefs upon its officers. 
Not more than half a score of people were at the 
alfresco service, perhaps a score and five were at 
the service at headquarters. This was a room 
fitted with benches and a rough platform. The 
whitewashed walls were adorned with mottoes, and 
the congregation was largely of giggling young 
people. Certainly the most devout in manner 
were the even more youthful worshippers who 
arrived in what Zilpha called " prayambulators," 
and who kept their eyes devoutly shut till the 
braying of the band set them to shouting in shrillest 
army fashion. 

" Prayambulators," communed the Doves ; " how 
divinely named ! What do you suppose they are 
on week-days ! Can it be they are only the 
English ' pram ' which answers to our perambul- 
ator ? " 

" Corporal Smith will make a few feeble remarks," 
announced Captain Susan, while Lieutenant Jane 
circulated the contribution tambourine. Corporal 
Smith's remarks may or may not have been 
" feeble ; " to this day the Doves decline to testify 
for either side. For, as Corporal Smith had no 
teeth and no palate, and his throat was husky with 
the granite dust of the quarry in which his weeks 
are spent, they were unable to distinguish a word 
he meant to say. Neither did he seem to care 

19 



290 HIRED FURNISHED. 

whether he was understood of men or no, for he 
began to prepare to reseat himself fully three 
minutes before he and the bench came together, 
and made the last of those feeble remarks quite in 
the shape of a letter S. Zilpha explained that 
Corporal Smith had served as one of the light- 
keepers on the dream-palace Casquets. Nearly 
all his life of twenty years he had lived with his 
father on that rock which seemed so attractive as 
a mere picture or as a dream, cradled by the sea, 
watched by the heavens, sung to by ten thousand 
winds. " He had found it dull," Zilpha said, and 
had come to brilliant Alderney to break stone and 
flatter himself that he had reached a metropolis 
of the world. " He says he is tickled to death to 
live on Alderney," said pretty Zilpha. " I sup- 
pose it would seem quite small to him if he saw 
London." 

Before the present method of intrusting the 
care of lighthouses to four men, each of whom 
has a spell of holiday in turn, a family lived on 
the lonely Casquets from 182 1 to 1849. Upon 
one occasion the elder daughter paid a visit to 
Alderney, but she soon grew weary of its bustle. 
"The world," as she called it, "was too full of 
trouble and noise," and in a few days she joyfully 
returned home. However, some years later she 
was wooed from her rock to marry an Alderney 
carpenter. 

Two things upon windy Alderney were of great 
interest. One was the return of the cows, Alder- 
ney cows, every evening to the village ; the other 
a drill of the island militia. Those gaunt, fawn- 
colored cows, with soft, wistful, intelligent eyes ! 
For the first time the strangers understood the 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 29 1 

meaning of '' ox-eyed Juno." Their interest in 
them never ceased, even after they ceased reaching 
out arms to touch the coast of France, so near that 
houses were distinctly visible. Under the waters 
of the Channel now lies the road which anciently 
connected this rock with Normandy, and for which 
to this day Alderney pays taxes for repairs. 

The Guernsey and the Alderney breeds of cattle 
are permitted to intermingle, being so much ahke, 
but the Jersey is entirely forbidden to both. The 
Jersey breed is said to have deteriorated from its 
condition of a century ago, probably for this very 
reason. Men and women decrease in size and 
beauty as well as in quality when too long insu- 
lated and forced to blood intermarriages, and 
naturally cattle are subject to the same law. The 
Channel Island cows are always tethered, even at 
pasture. They closely graze the grass within 
reach of their rope, then lie down to wait to be 
moved. It seems a cruel sight, that of these gentle 
creatures tied to a stake, frequently also with head 
harnessed down lest it reach up to apple-boughs. 
It is said that in Jersey are fifty-eight cattle to 
every one hundred acres. The breed in the 
three islands is very similar, although decidedly 
different ; in America we know no difference be- 
tween them. Each cow yields from four to five 
gallons of milk daily, and seven to ten pounds of 
butter a week. The Jersey cow is the smallest of 
the three breeds and the prettiest. None of them 
is it possible to fatten for the shambles, and their 
flesh makes very inferior beef, with yellow fat. 

One of the guide-books consulted by the Amer- 
icans stated that the prison of Alderney was seldom 
used. " By the salutary influence of the Salvation 



292 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Army it has now seldom inmates." Considering 
that the island had found it advisable to erect a 
substantial prison of late years, and considering 
what they had seen of the " Harmy " on Alderney, 
this seemed a slightly insecure statement. When 
they visited the court-house and were shown about 
by the jailer, they asked if the prison was empty. 

" No," was the answer. *' I have three soldiers, 
nice fellows. They are in for breaking and enter- 
ing one night when they were on a spree. I tell 
them what fools they are. You see they are tired 
of sojjering and are playing a game to be dis- 
charged from the service. It would ruin them, of 
course, in England ; they could never keep a situa- 
tion if they got one, and they don't really mean to 
be criminals. They are just headstrong, reckless 
boys, the eldest only one-and-twenty. They mean 
to get kicked out of the army, and then go to 
America under false names. They 're nice fellows ; 
they are shut in together, and spend their time 
playing cards." 

It seemed to the Doves that everything rascally 
and adventurous had gone to America, or was 
going. 

" Were not our Pilgrim Fathers adventurers ? 
Had they no spice of recklessness in them where 
should we have been?" communed those pilgrim 
Doves. '^ We inherit the pilgrim part of them, if 
no other." 

But those cows, those cream-giving cows ! 

" Cream, solid, cream-colored cream ! " they 
chuckled before the first supper. " Cream from 
brimming pitchers into brimming goblets ! " 

The next morning nobody chuckled. Nobody 
wanted milk for breakfast, or indeed anything else. 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 293 

" You drank ze milk wizzout ze water," explained 
their landlady. 

They never did it again. 

Every evening they watched those slow, digni- 
fied creatures, every one of them somebody's pet 
and answering to its name with beautiful docility, 
as they marched past their windows from the 
island fountain, where every evening and morning 
of the year they gather to drink (which water, 
except for cisterns, is the island's only supply). 
Every man's herd is by itself, but as all the herds 
came at almost the same time, it seemed like one 
long, stately procession, passing on to some flower- 
decked altar of the pagan gods. No cow straggled 
or capered (perish such an unworthy thought ! ) ; 
none flourished to one side or the other of the 
alley-like street. All was serious, even solemn; 
no shouts disturbed them or the Doves. They 
marched two by two, sometimes four abreast, and 
always with gentle countenances slightly inclined 
towards one another. Sometimes a herdsman was 
with them, at other times they kept the even tenor 
of their way without him. The Americans sometimes 
saw a herd halted before a shop while their attendant 
bought his salt-herring or codfish for supper. It 
was halted by a word, as at a word it started again. 
It was some time before they discovered that this 
rhythmic twilight march, in which each pensive 
marcher kept such perfect step and time, was man- 
aged by means of large loops of rope flung over 
each cow's horns, thus uniting the whole herd. 

These Channel Island cattle are very jealously 
guarded. No other cattle are permitted to land 
upon the island, except to be butchered for food. 
They never see another kind than their own, un- 



294 HIRED FURNISHED. ■ 

less one be sold for a huge price and taken away 
over the sea. It almost seems as if these delicate 
creatures must be homesick when forced to asso- 
ciate with coarser beings of such different colors 
and forms from themselves. None of them upon 
their island home ever know their own calves, 
which are always brought up by hand upon diluted 
milk. If ze water was not put to ze milk of 
their supper they would refuse their breakfasts as 
the Doves did. 

When Queen Victoria visited Alderney and drove 
the people out of their wits with proud joy in 
1854, a grand procession was arranged in her 
honor of these gentle bovine creatures, decked 
with green leaves, flowers being beyond the 
island's reach. 

One day the strangers became aware of some 
unusual excitement round Blaggud Corner. 
" Three o'clock," shouted one running boy to 
another. '' No, two ! " was the answer. " Pa told 
me himself." 

" None at all," said a blaggud, leaning against 
the most decorative design on the island, a show 
window full of anions and oranges, divided into 
triangles by tins of tomatoes. '' Is too," replied 
another, " we must be there sharp." 

" A review of the militia," exclaimed a little 
serving maid, excitedly, almost throwing the din- 
ner upon the table. " Mrs. Duplain says I may 
go." She danced about her duties with as 
pleased and excited expectation as if it were to 
be the trooping of the Queen's colors at the 
Horse Guards. 

Two hours later the whole island was astir. It 
seemed scarcely possible that so many men and 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 295 

children belonged upon the rock. All tended one 
way, and thither tended the Americans. 

There, upon a windy field called Le But, they 
saw sixty men, the island's army of defence. They 
were of all heights and sizes, and unanimous only 
in wind-beaten complexions and absence of teeth, 
or presence in hideous ruins. There must have 
been an officer to every half-dozen men ; indeed an 
invading army would meet an army of defence 
composed almost entirely of officers. Some of 
these officers did nothing but stand about in groups 
as if holding important councils of war. An ex- 
tremely long-legged young officer in white gloves 
and much military braid, trailed a clattering sword 
incessantly. No darky with a watermelon was 
ever better satisfied with himself than he, with his 
sword and braids. His martial stride was almost 
too martial for the island ; one half expected to see 
him topple over the brink and scare the peaceful 
fishes to death by all that martial show. He did 
not concern himself with the rest of the army in 
the least ; his white gloves were more to him than 
any possible invader, the clatter of his sword was a 
visible ecstacy as he lurched and lunged from 
one army division to the other, in a way to strike 
admiration and terror to island maidens and our 
two Salvation lasses from rustic England. 

The army itself could not forget Blaggud Corner. 
It tried to shelter itself from the wind. It played 
sly tricks and pranks under the very eyes of the 
officers. At rest the men pinched each other 
and grimaced at nursemaids from the garrison. 
It is safe to say that there were not a score of 
sound teeth in that army, and no dentist on the 
island. So far from hiding the hideous lack, every 



296 HIRED FURNISHED. 

one of those bold warriors seemed anxious to dis- 
play it in grins from ear to ear. In the roll-call 
each man answered to a number, but the officer in 
charge sometimes had occasion ex officio to bawl, 
" Now, John Heame, can't you answer to yer num- 
ber ? Ain't a-goin' to stan' no foolin' ! " Or, 
" Number Two, remember what you 'r doin' 
of!" 

The strutty young officer did nothing but strut, 
even though a youth of tender age, having called 
to a warrior bold, " Pa, I 'm goin' home now," ran 
between his legs.' He did nothing but strut and 
listen to maids whispering, " La ! Mr. Barbetson, 
ain't he nice ! " even when another officer makes 
a wide swish of his sword about him and shouts to 
crowding boys, " Here, you fellers, clear out ! " 

Another time, after " Eyes right ! " the other 
officer shouted, " Bill Bray, what are you a-squintin' 
at? " and forgot that Bill Bray was cross-eyed till 
the entire army shouted with laughter, and even 
then never saw the gun that was prodding helpless 
Bill Bray in the rear. This review was a village 
sensation ; every boy on Alderney watched it with 
eager eyes. Before many years he too could carry 
a gun now and then, and wear a uniform on Le But 
to dazzle nursemaids and frighten the never-coming 
invader. So the boys gathered close upon that 
warlike host in which were their fathers, uncles, and 
big brothers, and in spite of shooings and booings 
from both officers and men, nipped them irrever- 
ently wherever was a chance, not scorning to 
take unfair advantage in the rear, not fearing to 
dash straight through the wobbling ranks with hoot 
and yell, sometimes escaping gun jabs and some- 
times not, sometimes made prisoners of v.'ar and 



THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 297 

held by the slack of the trousers, till released with 
laughter and a thorough shaking. 

All this time the swaggering young officer, whose 
legs would certainly elsewhere have led to their 
arrest as drunk and incapable, continued his clat- 
tering and ecstatic gyrations. He was conscious 
of stranger eyes upon him ; the more conscious he 
grew, the more his legs gyrated. 

When all was over half or more of the island's 
defenders mounted a little child upon one shoulder, 
a gun upon the otllfer, and Alderney grew lively 
with bold warriors marching home to supper 
behind their cows and each with a child upon 
his shoulder. 

Probably even thus they would meet the Invader. 



298 HIRED FURNISHED. 



THE LADDER. 

" Disgusting fog ! " sighed the lady. 

Her companion looked up in surprise. 

" The sun shines." 

" Really ! what business has it to shine in De- 
cember? It's pea-soup time." 

'^ Ah ! I see : you are craving fogs as an excuse 
to leave London. I do not know why we should 
not hire-furnished without one." 

"Neither do I," she cordially acquiesced. "I 
was only waiting for you to say so. I hunger and 
thirst for that Wine-Cellar." 

Among answers to their advertisements the 
lady had carefully preserved one which thrilled 
her to the very foundations of her being. It was 
a lady's letter, a lady's stationery, penmanship, 
and manner of expression. It gave the impres- 
sion of a stately dame in black velvet and lace, 
wearing a long-tabbed widow's cap, and with a 
higher nose and color than an American of her 
position would have. This lady, "Madame 
Noire," they called her, had noticed their adver- 
tisement in the Church Times (of course she 
was High Church) and "with sufficient recom- 
mendations was willing to let the advertisers 
have her house at B. for the sake of having 



THE LADDER. 299 

it aired. There were seven rooms, gas, piano, 
and the Wine-Cellar." 

When she read this letter the advertiser nearly 
broke into a cheer. 

" Just think of it ! To own a Wine-Cellar during 
a whole winter ! What luxury ! What splendor ! 
What an atmosphere of ' hig-leef,' as our French 
friends say. What a flourish and finish to our 
letters home only casually to mention, ' He would 
certainly add a postscript had he not just run 
down to the Wine-Cellar ' ! How the Smiths, 
Joneses, Brovv^ns, would all have bihous attacks, 
imagining the butler, the footman, the chief cook, 
and the bottle-washer, the men-servants and maid- 
servants, the everything that properly consorts with 
an English wine-cellar ! Of course there should 
be marble-floored stables, and no end of flowing 
manes and tails to accompany the Wine-Cellar. If 
there is not, we have no occasion to mention so 
small a discrepancy to the Robinsons." 

" What will you put into it ? " 

"Into the Wine-Cellar?" 

The lady reflected a moment. Then she named 
the fluid consumed between them in sufficient 
quantities to wake the horror of all their English 
friends. 

Both laughed. For this fluid made a perpetual 
rift in the lute of their relations with their English 
friends who openly considered their perfect diges- 
tion and health an insolent flout in the face of 
of nature when they consumed vinegar ct Vameri- 
caine by the quart, instead of mustard a Va?i- 
glaise by the ton. 

The Wine-Cellar settled the question. No mat- 
ter what inducements elsewhere were offered, be 



300 HIRED FURNISHED. 

it a softer winter climate (for little England's rela- 
tion to the Gulf Stream gives it more climates than 
you can shake a stick at, sometimes a pair of them 
in one town) than briskly bracing Broadstairs, be 
it " plate " included in the furnishing (with the 
Wine-Cellar there was none), be it even an " exten- 
sive library," as one offer held, — no matter for 
anything and everything, so long as there was but 
one Wine-Cellar, one glorious, one magnificent, 
one sublime, one unutterable VVine-Cellar ! 

It seemed consistently Wine-Cellarish that the 
black-velveted and high-nosed owner exacted 
references, though neither in the case of Villa nor 
in that of Cot, had they been demanded. 

*' You see," remarked the financial manager of 
the firm to the literary, — " you see it is not of our 
solvency, inasmuch as we pay for the whole term 
in advance ; it is of our moral and social status. 
Madam Noire does not intend to insult her Wine- 
Cellar with plebeian society." 

" What will the Wine-Cellar say to the vinegar ? 
Is n't vinegar, associating familiarly with raw onions 
and baked beans, a bit plebeian as compared with 
Veuve Cliquot and Clos Vougeot?" 

This was something of a blow. 

But, after a pause, " I will cork the jug tightly 
and label it Sweet Malaga^ 

They arrived at the Wine-Cellar after dark, wind- 
ing through the usual narrow and down-slipping 
streets of an ancient fishing village. From high 
walls and gabled gateway their carriage roused 
sleeping echoes murmuring not of ancient glories, 
of times and manners past, but, at least to the 
lady's ears, sweetly singing, " Wine-Cellar ! Wine- 
Cellar! " She pictured at the foot of the descent 



THE LADDER. lO\ 

a high-nosed dwelling with black-velvet portals 
opening widely upon a spacious entrance hall, a 
glimpse beyond of a stately drawing-room and 
handsome dining-room, made even more dignified 
by their consciousness that beneath them the 
Wine-Cellar extended its noble vaults. "All," she 
chuckled, " royally condescending to be aired by 
vagabond Americans for thirty dollars a quarter ! " 

The carriage drew up in the darkness of a 
corner gaslamp many rods away. 

" See ! " cried the lady. Then with less haste 
and more dignity, she pointed to the level of 
the pavement where burned a low thin line of 
illumination, the only bit of light in the whole 
facade. 

" Behold our Wine-Cellar !" 

" Do English dowagers illuminate Wine-Cellars 
at ten shiUings a week?" asked the other, with 
some inflexion of doubting. 

Dreaming of that Wine-Cellar the lady had 
brought her best silver and napery. She had 
visions during all the railway journey of the flash- 
ing decanters she should find over the Wine-Cellar, 
the crystal goblets of finest cutting, the fairylike 
china to match, and to make their breakfasts and 
luncheons poetry, their tea-tray a dream, their din- 
ners Music, Sculpture, Painting, and the Drama. 

An intelligent, well-bred young woman, evidently 
more a confidential friend than even a confiden- 
tial servant of the owner (as happens only in 
England), had come up from London for neces- 
sary domestic arrangements, and met them at the 
door. 

Suddenly the lady's reason tottered on its throne. 
Even the throne itself uprose and reeled. 



302 HIRED FURNISHED. 

The Grand Portal was not of black velvet. It 
was scarcely wider than she was, scarcely higher 
than the partner of her hirings. There was no 
vista of drawing and dining room ; the Wine-Cellar 
did not make itself felt, the worn oilcloth of the 
narrow entry did^ — likewise the steep and nar- 
row stairs, cheek by jowl with the narrow front- 
door. 

*^ The stairs are always covered with oilcloth in 
English seaside places," whistled the lady. " The 
sand you know." 

Evidently his courage did not need whistling to 
keep it up, whatever might be suspected of hers. 

" The ' sincere ' English taste keeps its marble 
for its Wine-Cellar. Seems very comfortable here," 
said the wise one. 

The fooHsh one wisely held her peace. Wisely, 
because later the indescribable, unparalleled queer- 
ness of the house largely compensated for its 
shortcoming of the mundane elegance so unrea- 
sonably pictured. Never in all their wanderings 
had any such odd creation met their sight. It 
sometimes seemed a dwelling in wonderland, 
where on windy midnights they heard the mock 
turtle's lament that he was not real, where the 
Cheshire cat's grin wavered to and fro in the 
sunny mornings, and where viewless Hatters took 
tea with viewless Dormice and March hares in 
the dining-room, whenever they left it. 

When the Americans undertook to find a name 
for the house, as they always did name their hired- 
furnisheds, they found themselves embarrassed by 
the many peculiarities, any one of them character- 
istic enough to give a name. 

" Why not call it The Wine-Cellar?" 



THE LADDER. 303 

The other partner's brow clouded. 

" It is not a Pub." 

" Of course not. It would n't pay. The Tartar 
Frigate, the Jolly Tar, the Man of Kent, not to 
mention the Dolphin are quite too near, the very 
youngest of them established in 1776." 

They never quite decided upon a name, though 
"The Ladder" seemed most appropriate and was 
most in use. They wrote to their London friends 
of their " Crystal Palace ; " the Smiths, Browns, 
Joneses, and Robinsons heard of their " Swell 
Front ; " to each other, when time did not too 
much fugit, they named it, " The House-in-which- 
one-may-not-throw-Stones." 

It had a swell front, one most decidedly swollen. 
But for that swell, swelling out toward the swells 
of the German Ocean, its width would have been 
scarcely more than twenty feet. The dining-room, 
drawing-room, and one of the bedrooms were 
largely composed of that elaborate swell. The 
house consisted chiefly (of course after the Wine- 
Cellar) of three flights of ladders (called stairs) 
climbing straightly up a white cliff of Albion, one 
of the very cliffs that Caesar and St. Augustine 
may have made remarks upon before these ladders 
hid it. Thus while the rotund front of three 
rooms was chiefly of glass, in the form of bow- 
windows projecting even beyond the brick swell, 
the back was blank and rigid, being of solid rock. 
Every room of the six was on a different floor, 
except the three bedrooms. They spread them- 
selves on the top level, three ladders from the 
kitchen, very hke an umbrella on its stick or a 
mushroom on its stalk. Naturally, the Ladder- 
esque style of domestic architecture has some in- 



304 HIRED FURNISHED. 

conveniences. The sneeze and the handkerchief 
may not always chance upon the same level ; the 
needle may be with the thimble, but the buttonless 
garment three ladders away. Would the dinner- 
getter stay her soul with philosophic comfort 
between bastings of the joint, she must climb a 
cliff of Albion two ladders or three from the base 
to Marcus AureHus, or else cry upward that her 
philosopher be cast down. One needs to adopt 
the Ladderesque style of housekeeping to realize 
how extremely wayward are the habits of many 
small adjuncts of civilization besides handkerchiefs 
and thimbles, to realize too how possible, even 
though so highly improbable, to live, love, suffer, 
and die on a space of earth not larger than a 
family burial-lot, without an inch of space beyond 
that covered by ladders up the face of a cliff. The 
Ladder had no outside space wherein to hang a 
handkerchief or to dry a stocking. From the door 
there was but one step to the pavement ; through 
that one door, for lack of any other, the inhab- 
itants must receive their letters, visitors, and sup- 
plies, through it they must project their ashes. 

The crystal part of the dwelHng was about one 
third of the three front rooms. The enormous 
windows formed almost the entire facade and 
looked three ways upon the German Ocean, boom- 
ing beneath. Directly in front, the crystal faced 
France, and framed at times a looming hint of 
Calais Heights. Close beneath, were fishing boats 
and a quaint little oyster shop, where the fisher- 
man owner was rarely seen, and whoever entered 
to buy (in the winter) left his order and money 
on a shelf. Behind and above, were quaint, sun- 
less streets, flintstone arches, and ancient walls, as 



THE LADDER. 305 

well as modern streets ; to the left, the sea ; to the 
right, a succession of empty lodging-houses and 
fantastic summer villas gone to sleep. 

The Ladder was its owner's summer home, that 
owner whose nose came down a few notches, and 
whose velvet and lace changed to merino and 
braid, when the Americans recognized how in- 
compatible the Ladder's space with trailing 
raiment and any unusual altitude of feature. They 
believed in her honorable sincerity now, having 
before credited her only with the artificial sim- 
plicity of the aristocrat, when she wrote them 
that she had bought the house some years before 
as a vacation refuge for her nurses and children. 

'^ It is n't quite an everyday nose, you see, even 
yet, and there 's plenty of velvet and lace in the 
winter wardrobes ; notice she writes nurses." 

"How many would the house hold?" asked 
the other, with mental calculation of the nurse-and- 
child capacity of three beds and a folding chair. 

The house itself, by reason of the vagaries of 
the cliff at its back, as well as every room in it, 
was shaped like the very craziest patch of the 
craziest quilt ever evolved from crazy minds. 
This eccentricity was magnified and multiphed 
by mirrors ingeniously fitted into every angle, 
recess, corner, where a mirror could possibly be 
inserted, as well as broadly between doors and 
over the marble chimney-piece. They were mir- 
rors long and mirrors slender, mirrors short and 
mirrors broad, all evidently designed to magnify 
space and dimensions. Two buffets in the din- 
ing-room below had mirror doors and backs, ditto 
one etagere in the drawing-room above. The 
result was less a magnitude of dimensions than 

20 



306 HIRED FURNISHED. 

a magnitude of glitter, of shine and shimmer, 
of high Hghts and cross lights, resulting frequently 
in such high and cross perplexity of vision that 
these Hirers gave way to dark suspicions. At 
times they mutually gazed aslant with an oblique- 
ness consorting oftener with paganism and pig- 
tails, than with American straight-forwardness, 
half expecting the fatal words, " How cross-eyed 
you are ! " and ready with that always effective 
retort, " You 're another ! " 

The tiny drawing-room midway up Albion's 
cliff, and largely out of doors, being so largely of 
glass, was furnished with a Brussels carpet evi- 
dently reduced from the London house and larger 
rooms of its owner, and upholstered with green 
rep now considerably faded. It had Nottingham 
lace curtains and antimacassars without number. 
Muslin flowers (ah, the untold millions of them 
in England) and tuppenny ha'penny ornaments 
beyond count gave impression of aesthetic decora- 
tion entrusted entirely to nurses and children. 
The general effect was of the strangest. Some- 
how, in spite of its one side of everlasting rock, 
its other side of solemn sea, the room held yet 
the spiritual essence of a British matron, but one 
eii deshabille and given over to summer-vacation 
ways. The strangers fancied they could see her 
wearing a sailor hat in place of the wide-tabbed 
cap, and with a Trilby blouse and short petticoats 
tumbling in from the sands, to sprawl all over this 
green rep with a Keynote or a Yellow novel, 
regardless of the conventions that elsewhere keep 
her nose and stockings up, and her literary taste 
under guidance of the "Church Times" and 
"The Queen." 



THE LADDER. 30/ 

Deep down in the bowels of the earth was 
the kitchen, whence that low line of light had 
greeted the Americans upon their arrival ; likewise 
there was the Wine-Cellar ; likewise the space 
under the pavement called by all indigenes " coal- 
scubberd." In no such dungeon in America 
would ^' help "' of any possible condition consent 
to be confined. No smutty scullion, however 
greasy, would stoop so low. It was nothing else 
than a grewsome cellar cemented top, bottom, and 
sides, and hung all about with fire-tried cooking 
utensils. Close under the ceiling two panes of 
glass, placed lengthwise and beside each other, 
not one above the other, touched the level of the 
street. They were always splashed thick with 
mud, and to wash them was foolish, for the next 
passing foot splashed them anew. Washed once a 
day, they remained in condition to afford a compre- 
hensive view of the native foot, often a consider- 
able object to view. The whole island might have 
been feet and nothing more, for all those panes 
revealed. During only about six hours of a sunny 
winter's day did twihght creep in, like a thing 
scared or ashamed. After three o'clock until 
nine the next morning, only by gaslight could 
a face be seen. There was no possible exit from 
this cavern save by a ladder, and no other possi- 
ble entrance into it, unless for the trayful of dishes, 
which more than once during the American period 
somersaulted into the dungeon without so much 
as touching a ladder, albeit Nellie, the tray- bearer, 
knew familiarly from base to summit that House- 
in-which-one-may-not-throw-Stones. 

The House-in-which-one-may-not-throw-Stones 
was delightfully clean, for it was an English house- 



308 HIRED FURNISHED. 

keeper's own. Because it was the first of their 
hiring that really was somebody's own, and not 
furnished expressly to be let, these Hirers (at 
least one of them) was conscious of a delicious 
sense of peeping-and-prying, and the indulgence 
of that instinct of human nature which has created 
the Interviewer and the Personal Column, as well 
as made the quilting bee and the sewing society 
of our fore-parents, — the same instinct that makes 
Plutarch and Pliny of perennial interest, that has 
preserved dirty, mean Pepys from oblivion, that 
makes Bos well, the Due de Saint-Simon, Horace 
Walpole, and Madame de Se'vigne famous, and 
that swells the world's vast and ever-rising flood 
of biographies, autobiographies, correspondences, 
memoirs, and reminiscences. Many a time this 
peeper-and-pryer had inspected domestic interiors 
of England, but always under guidance. She had 
revealed the secrets of pandowdy, strawberry 
shortcake, and codfish balls in more than one 
indigenous kitchen, but ever with watchful eyes 
upon her. Never before had the bridle been 
taken from her neck, and she turned loose, with- 
out let or hindrance, among cupboards and clothes- 
presses not her own, not even of her own country ; 
and it was with the delicious taste ot forbidden 
fruit in her mouth that her face inserted itself 
between beds and mattresses, that she " hefted " 
pillows, peered into closets, and turned every 
kitchen utensil upside down with regret that it 
would not be turned inside out, and that it had 
no hind-side to be made a front one. 

Blankets were fleecy and abundant ; the coun- 
terpanes snowy, the beds martyred geese. Evi- 
dently Madam Noire was of the old school 



THE LADDER. 309 

never modernized to hair mattresses ; although the 
feather beds were not of early eighteenth but late 
nineteenth century geese, and the ticking almost 
new. The chamber furnishing was extremely plain, 
but comfortable in every particular, as the English 
habit always is. In the dining-room-of-many-corners, 
the fireplace in the farthest one, the two decanters 
flashed as brilliantly as they would have flashed 
with ten companions ; wine-glasses were neat, and 
a full dozen minus three ; the china of the usual 
white-and-gold variety, and ample in quantity for 
a pair of Hirers with now and then a guest. 

" Imagine," said the lady, " there is not a bread 
or cake tin in the whole Ladder. Not a steamer, 
a double -boiler, an ice-cream freezer, a custard 
cup, an egg whisk, a pie plate, a gem pan, a 
potato-masher, a flour-sifter, a pancake-turner, a 
coffee or spice mill, a can-opener, a fruit-strainer, 
an apple-corer in the whole House-in-which-one- 
may-not-throw-Stones. " 

The other one of them looked aghast. 

"Go out at once and buy," he gasped, as if 
starvation already gripped them. 

" No. I will manage as the English house- 
keeper manages in her summer home, and buy 
bread and all sweets from the confectioner and 
baker. But what under the sun can I do with 
the English housekeeper's implements for sub- 
stantial cooking? Do see this whole nest of baby 
bath-tubs ; they are for English puddings for which 
the eggs are evidently beaten with this pitchfork. 
Those basting hooks would bear a heifer ; here 's 
a fish-kettle for a mother whale, and a smaller for 
her daughter ; one could rock-me-to-sleep-mother 
in this chopping-tray ; this roasting pan is divided 



310 HIRED FURNISHED. 

into two hemispheres large enough to carry the 
Zodiac twins. I fancy one is for the roast beef, 
the other for the Yorkshire pudding ; one for fowl, 
the other for sausages ; or perhaps Madam Noire 
has a choice of joints for every dinner. These 
colossal objects explain the gravy boats and meat 
platters, in any one of which both of us might go 
ashore from a wreck. We can use the gravy boat 
platter for our roasts. I will buy a roasting pan 
commensurate, and we need not invest in a cork- 
screw, there 's one for every ladder." 

That there was no lack of trays needs not to be 
said. The god Tray is ever chief among the 
household idols of England. Who ever read an 
English novel into which the Tray did not enter, 
visibly or invisibly? It may be the Tray of 
breakfast, of luncheon, of tea, or of supper ; 
but there Tray is, succulent, stimulating, grateful, 
comforting, refreshing, solidly imposing, undeniably 
British. Who ever forgets that supper tray in 
Cranford, at sight of which the good mistress 
exclaims, as if in pleased surprise, " Why, Betty, 
what have you brought us ? " having herself been 
cooking for that tray all day. 

The English palace gathers unto itself trays of 
silver and trays of gold. The English country 
house is rich in heirloom trays ; the aesthetic 
London house outlays upon much inlaying of its 
trays ; Villadom adorns its trays with fine linen 
and much stitchery ; the Cottager has her painted 
idol ; the tramp steals every Tray upon which he 
can lay his hands. 

'' Why do we make no account of the Tray in 
America?" one asked. 

" Democracy's rights," explained the other of 



THE LADDER. 311 

them. "The Triumph of the Modern Spirit and 
the Rights of Man. In our country we can go 
to the tray, but the tray rarely comes to us, lacking 
legs. The English Tray and the English coal- 
scuttle are Molochs that yearly devour their 
thousands. Think of the endless procession of 
servile legs that toil, and have toiled for centuries, 
up and down stairs with them, under bodies bent 
broken and despairing, a servile class and nothing 
more. Think of it, thoughtless worshipper of 
your Five-o'clock, and try to imagine a ' help ' 
in America 'accepting a position,' as they call it, 
where is a ladder between kitchen and dining- 
room, two ladders between the teakettle and the 
afternoon Tray ! " 

For a brief space of time one of the Hirers 
looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt. Then 
her brow cleared. 

" As you are no less a Five-o'clocker than I am, 
you may add your two legs to our tea-tray after 
this. But there are no ladders between our tea- 
kettle and tray, for there the kettle sings at the 
drawing-room grate on the trivet I bought the 
next morning after the evening of our arrival." 

In consequence of this little domestic interlude, 
at five o'clock that very afternoon two tea-cups 
and saucers came up from the dining-room in a 
man's bare right hand, the tea-pot in the man's 
bare left, the tray under his arm. As the other 
of them climbed up from the kitchen with the 
cut bread and butter, she inquired : — 

" Where are the spoons ? " 

" Daresay I dropped them somewhere," was 
the nonchalant answer. " You ought to keep the 
tea-things always up here." 



312 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" And wash them, where ? " 

The rest was silence. 

Nellie, their Maid of the Morning, came singing 
to the Ladder with every winter's dawn. She 
was a fisherman's daughter from a dusky interior 
three doors away, and served them deftly and 
honestly, albeit with various perfectly visible sus- 
picions. Every morning the lady heard Nellie's 
blithe voice below, whereupon she rose for one 
little instant from her feathery couch and lifted 
the window a wee crack. The doorkey (there 
was but one, for chffs of Albion do not permit of 
back doors), was thrust through the crack attached 
to a long string. When a pull came upon the 
string it was evident that NeUie had possessed 
herself of the key. The string was drawn up, and 
the feathery couch received its own again till 
Nellie's pleasant voice announced the hot water 
and breakfast. 

Nellie was only sixteen, but already a clever 
cook. She was shyly but firmly convinced that 
she could cook "American things," if only once 
told how. The Hirers were wildly desirous of 
buckwheat-cakes, and Nellie, with amazement 
depicted upon her frank countenance, told them 
where buckwheat could be found, the only place 
in all Broadstairs. So the buckwheat was ordered, 
and with it a sealed can, or tin, of golden syrup, 
"two pounds for sixpence," the lady announced ; 
" eggs will come also, not at fifteen pence a dozen, 
but twelve for fifteen pence, oranges twenty the 
shilling, potatoes sixpence the gallon, apples four- 
pence the pound." 

" Apples by the pound ! ar'n't you ashamed of 
yourself to order less than a bushel ? Tell me, at 



THE LADDER. 313 

fourpence the pound for goldings, how much will 
a barrel of baldwins cost? " 

The lady's face was troubled. It always was, 
when she was particularly reminded of apples by 
the pound. Until her arrival in England, many 
years ago, she had never seen apples sold by the 
pound, the most reasonable and just way to buy 
and sell them. She chanced to be passing a 
green grocer's, — never shall she forget the corner 
in a sordid neighborhood, a corner of Great Coram 
and Marchmont Street, — when she espied pleasant 
apples at something-or-other the pound. Exper- 
imentally she asked for a pound of those apples. 
When the boy gave her three, she exclaimed, " Is 
that all that goes to a pound ? Then — " 

She was about to add, " I must have five or 
six pounds," when the green grocer himself, hear- 
ing her exclamation, stepped up. 

"Three ain't enough for a fourpenny pound, 
ain't it ? Yer 'd better 'ave yer hown garding 'n 
grow happles fer yerself, er yer 'd better heat hun- 
yuns 'n' leave happles till yer c'n hafford to pay 
for 'em ! " 

The American was out of the shop by this 
time ; but for hours, " happles 'n' hunyuns, happles 
^n' hunyuns," rattled in her ears, and not for 
months afterwards did she venture into a orreen- 
grocer's shop. When she did venture, she did 
not ask for apples, but for butter. 

" Hain't yer gut no heyes ? This is a green- 
grocer's," snarled the owner. 

" In my country we buy our butter of the green- 
grocer," she ventured to explain. 

The man looked her over from head to foot, 
then remarked superciliously : — 



314 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" It 's a rum 'un, then." 

Years afterwards, tliis American heard an Eng- 
lishwoman returned from six weeks at the World's 
Fair lecture upon *' Impressions of America." 
She was a short, red-faced, dowdily-dressed 
woman, the very type and pattern of John Bull's 
wife, as American caricature represents her, who 
showed by her every word, that, while in America, 
she considered herself in a Pays conqiiis. It was 
actually pitiable that this woman was as uncon- 
scious as a dead woman of the effect she really 
had upon the taciturn Americans, supposed to be 
speechless from admiration. The lecturer even 
told of the excitement into which her English per- 
son and her " London frock " threw an entire vil- 
lage. The Americans in her audience did not 
doubt it ! 

"The lower classes in America are unspeakably 
insolent," said the lecturer. " I once went to a 
Chicago express office to ask after a strayed box. 
No sooner had I stated my business, than the 
clerk bawled to another, ' If here is n't another 
woman asking about a trunk ! ' ' Give me none 
of your insolence,' I said to the man, ' I am an 
English gentlewoman, and unaccustomed to im- 
pertinence.' " 

" Happies ';?' Jiunyuns ! happles ';z' hunytins ! " 
memory echoed in the audience, and an American 
longed to match the vulgar woman's experience 
of " American lower classes in an express office," 
during the rush and turmoil of a World's Fair, 
with her own experience of that very day in a 
Golden Grain tea-shop in Great Russell Street. 
Finding her tea too strong, she had asked for a little 
hot water. The girl who brought it, as she turned 



thb: ladder. 315 

away, remarked audibly to another. "She 's goin' 
to get two cups outer one." 

When the buckwheat arrived at the House-in- 
which-one-may-not-throw-Stones, its bulk was 
amazing. 

"■ I don't believe it is ground," exclaimed a 
Hirer. 

" Never heard of henny that was/' said the man 
who brought it, and who knew it only as cattle 
fodder. The lady now understood the amazed ex- 
pression of Nellie's face during the buckwheat-cake 
conference, and why she always sniffed at but never 
tasted the Johnny-cake. 

And that relates to the Wine-Cellar. For to 
visit the Wine-Cellar, was invited the friend who 
brought with her the prepared package of Ameri- 
can gold dust from which the Johnny-cakes were 
evolved, as well as the " baked Indian," upon 
which Nellie kept a wary and watchful eye, but of 
which she could not be persuaded to taste, not 
knowing if it were of a friendly tribe. 

The lady was determined to live up to the W^ine- 
Cellar, of which she had talked so much before 
leaving London, although to live up to it, with 
only willing but very youthful Nellie, was not so 
easy to do. She purchased the caps and aprons 
of a stylish parlor-maid, and Nellie was persuaded 
to wear them, with many blushes and giggling 
protestations of unfitness for so much elegance. 
Nellie was thenceforth observed to glance fre- 
quendy into the multitudinous mirrors. When- 
ever a sudden giggle was followed by a dead, 
awful silence, it was known that a mirror had cast 
Nellie's reflection back at her in a guise of an 



3l6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

over-powering swell. Yet she never could be 
enticed or deceived into wearing her finery out 
of doors. Even crossing over to the little oyster- 
shop for twenty-five oysters for two shillings, with 
no prospect of meeting a soul, she snatched off 
her cap and apron, and, in the twinkling of an eye, 
was transformed into a fishermaid again with tou- 
sled hair and bounding motion, till her return. 
Apparently, she thus avoided the comments of 
her acquaintances upon a towering ambition to 
become, without preliminary education, that creme 
de la creme of servants, a parlor-maid. She 
would make a perfect one, tidy, quiet, respectful, 
cheerful and capable ; the spirit of the lady re- 
pined greatly that clever Nellie was but a passing 
circumstance, and not a fixture of their hirings. 
Gladly would she have invited America to send 
for her, and be blessed in the acquisition, but for 
the knowledge that, with a net-ful of daughters, 
Nellie's parents had not enough of them to spare 
one out of their reach. 

The Americans thus had not only a Wine- 
Cellar to welcome their guests, but a staff of 
servants. There was Mrs. 'Arris at the head of the 
laundry department, who carried and fetched the 
family washing in a wheelbarrow, to and from 
the front door, Mrs. 'Arris concerning whose ex- 
istence was no possible doubt, she being rosy and 
rotund at past sixty-five, an age when she coquet- 
tishly confessed one ought to begin to "hexpect 
the little hitems and hincidents of hage." Besides 
this chief of the laundry department, was Nellie the 
parlor-maid, Ellen the cook, and Nell the butler. 

Alas, it was in the latter capacity that the staff 
came to grief. 



THE LADDER. 31/ 

" Another bottle of claret, Nell," said the hostess 
one dinner-time when the guests were two. 

" The yellow seal, top row, southeast corner of 
the Wine-Cellar," added the host, with a wicked 
smile. 

" None there, sir. I brought them both up 
before dinner," said the unsuspicious butler. 
Fortunately the other bottle was yet unopened 
upon the buffet and multiplied by a background 
mirror into three or four ; so nobody had occasion 
to weep, although much to laugh. 

When Mrs. St. John's Wood, author of " Court 
Circles " and " Queenly Graces,'' came from St. 
John's W^ood to the Ladder for a few days' visit, 
she seemed very much more English-you-know, 
that is, very much more unlike Americans, than she 
had ever seemed to the Hirers in her own home. 

Mrs. Sinjonood, as she pronounced herself, had 
spent some time in America, and was given to 
much criticism of Americans, which was not un- 
fair, as no people criticise other peoples more than 
Americans do. In fact, the absolutely unjust and 
conspicuously provincial criticisms by Americans 
of everything they see and hear away from their 
own country made these Hirers at times almost 
ashamed of their nationality. To hear nasal voices 
at their highest pitch proclaiming the cosmopoli- 
tanism of the " Amurricun Citizen " and the 
provinciality of " these Hinglish," in the very 
capital of England and almost of the world, was 
enough to make one speak disrespectfully of every 
stripe in the Starry Banner. In their own country 
these Hirers heard fifty oiTensive remarks concern- 
ing the English to one they heard in England 
of Americans. Hundreds of Americans return to 



3l8 HIRED FURNISHED. 

their hot biscuits and ice-water every year, with 
nothing brought home from their travels but 
anecdotes and descriptions of European barbarism. 
When one considers the troops of ill-dressed ex- 
cursionists gaping through Europe without change 
of linen, personally conducted at so much a head ; 
back-country Americans with their hideously cor- 
rupt English, in which every a cants over upon its 
back instead of standing upright hke the rt;'s of 
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, George 
Washington, and Daniel Webster, when one con- 
siders this annual "American Invasion" into the 
beaten highways of the tourist's England without a 
single glimpse of the real England, the beautiful 
homes and domestic, intellectual, spiritual life of a 
people whose character has made their speech and 
their blood to dominate the world, one is almost 
disposed to beat one's breast and tear one's hair 
three several and distinct times, — as a Mayflower 
descendant, a daughter of the Colonial Wars, and 
a D. A. R. 

" It is positively amazing that English people 
who have never seen Americans in their own 
country think as well of us as they do," these 
Americans repeatedly agreed. 

Mrs. Sinjonood of St. John's Wood was not of 
the old school ; she hated feather beds and lay 
abed, to prove it, till nearly luncheon-time. She 
took meantime an exact inventory of her chamber 
furnishing, and enlivened the breakfast-table by 
recounting the spots on the toilet-table and the 
cracks of the washstand. Everything on the 
dining-table, excepting of course the food, passed 
throufrh the crucible of her criticism. The 
hitherto unsuspected duplicity of the china, the 



THE LADDER. 319 

deceitfulness of the glass ware, the thinness of the 
carpets, the weak spots in the curtains, — she knew 
them all, and told of every one. It was only a 
hired-furnished that she thus mercilessly vivi- 
sected ; it was not the Hirers' own, and she con- 
tinually reminded them of her realization of the 
fact by saying, " Merely one of the seaside houses 
that English people furnish cheaply for the sum- 
mer ; " but for all that one of the Hirers grew very 
uncomfortable under the perpetual inspection and 
criticism of the hiring they enjoyed so much, and 
she knew that under the same circumstances, 
and a Sinjonood hiring, she would be less profuse 
of sarcastic comment. She believed Americans 
generally of the Sinjonood position would have 
the same reserves. She felt her nose rise not at 
the tip but at the bridge, and her color increase a 
ranglaise. With black velvet and a tabbed widow's 
cap she would have resented Mrs. Sinjonood ; 
without them shfe kept silence upon her conviction 
that it was not quite well-bred to make a hostess 
half ashamed of so poor a hired-furnished, and of 
realizing that poverty so incompletely as to invite 
a guest to share its misery even for three days. 

" Do not generahze all Englishwomen from 
one," expostulated the wise one. " Not to gen- 
eralize from the American who eats 'tomayto 
BOSS ' on his apple pie, and does Yurrup in thirty 
days, is what you are continually impressing upon 
English people. Mrs. Sinjonood lacked tact, as 
the English largely do ; but what did that pretty 
American girl lack last summer who bit an end 
from a Turkish sweet, and then returned it to the 
general quantity? " 

" Mrs. Sinjonood lives among courts and queens. 



320 HIRED FURNISHED. 

at least in her daily work, and her father was a 
Q. C. The pretty American girl's father was a 
shoemaker who patented an invention, although, 
like all perceptive and receptive American girls, 
she had the dress and appearance of a princess. 
There 's where the mistake comes, and all the 
friction of misconceptions ; for no English person 
would ever think of expecting or excusing the 
manner of a shoemaker's daughter in her, but all 
exact the manners of the princess she manages 
to look. It is sometimes not all rose for the 
transatlantic plebeian in Europe that his, particu- 
larly her^ appearance is so much better than that 
of the same breed in England. Neither is it 
tout de roses for the rest of us." 

" Your table is very American," said Mrs. 
Sinjonood ; " you use a sugar basin and a spoon 
vase. We English prefer to offer sugar, a few 
lumps at a time, in a wine-glass or glass saucer. 
It is cleaner thus than the same lumps repeated 
day after day in a basin." 

" Ours is a clean country," feebly suggested a 
Hirer. " We do not use a nail-brush to our sugar, 
even though it be a month old, as London cooks 
have been known to do. You English do not use 
as many spoons as we, hence no spoon vases, now 
I am bound to say rather old fashioned even in 
America. You have fewer ' spoon-vittles.' All 
winter long you eat the same fork-vegetables, so 
to speak, onions, cabbage, turnips, sprouts, par- 
snips, all on the same plate. Our corn, squash, 
tomatoes, succotash, green peas, our peaches, 
cranberry-sauce, apple-sauce, etc. are saucer-served 
and spoon-eaten, hence our spoon vases." 

The lady almost blushed one day in offering a 



THE LADDER. 321 

dish of Brussels sprouts to Mrs. Sinjonood, after 
three days of corn, tomatoes, green peas, and 
green beans. She imagined it so inhospitable to 
thrust eternal sprouts into mouths eternally winter- 
fed with them, remembering that English homes 
at the end of the winter always seemed to her per- 
meated to their inmost recesses, draperies, nap- 
eries, upholstery, even to the laces of the boudoir, 
the leather of the library, with the double distilled 
essence of roast mutton and Brussels sprouts. 

'' Now this is nice," remarked Mrs. Sinjonood 
with suggestive emphasis to the dish of sprouts. 
But to the dish of sugar corn. " It is sweetened 
porridge. Don't you hate porridge?" 

The House-in-which-one-may-not-throw-Stones 
turned its swell front to the sun nearly all the day 
long. From morning till mid-afternoon, the little 
drawing-room was flooded with golden light, even 
until the writing-tables and reading-chairs must be 
moved into the least dazzling corners. All those 
bright winter days were filled with work and play, 
with books from a good circulating library, with 
long letters and long walks, with visits, even with 
a ball and dancing programmes mysterious in 
mention of bd, gh,gd,ff, bt^ to be translated, *' blue 
dress," "golden hair," "good dancer," "flat- 
foot," "big teeth." There was also one occult /, 
declared by one of them to indicate " Idiot," but 
by the other of them translated " Incognita." 

" Our dear English friends highly resent the 
imputation of prominent teeth, and attribute the 
slander entirely to Gallic malice," laughed one of 
them, the morning after that delightful ball to 
which they were letter-of-introductioned from 

21 



322 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Cavendish Square ; " but the fact remains that there 
are enormous dental displays among them, a pecu- 
harity we in America have somewhat inherited. 
Whoever saw a Frenchman with conspicuous 
teeth ? " 

" They have not sufficient osseous structure," 
explained the other ; '■' and I beheve that is why 
they still keep up their absurd farce of duelling. 
They have not grown ashamed of flourishing 
swords, as the big-boned Englishman long ago 
grew ashamed of fighting with his fists. But why 
the English deny their valiant teeth I never can 
understand, particularly after a ball, or a walk 
down Regent Street. It was an Englishman, one 
Robert Coddrington, who, so early as the Com- 
monwealth, warned his countrywomen against 
' that simper of the lips with which many gentle- 
women try to hide the greatness of their teeth.' " 

In the month of January sunshine, however 
dazzling, is not to be depended upon for con- 
stancy. In time the Ladder was wrapped in 
cloudiness. Then the winds beat and roared 
upon the House -in -which -one -may -not -throw- 
Stones, the wild sea before the house lashed itself 
to thunderous fury; no more the mock turtle's 
lament was heard in the elemental uproar that 
almost deafened them. Out upon that raging 
deep they knew poor souls must be struggling for 
their lives, perhaps to lose them even so near 
home; for out there, but a little space of calm 
water away, although now distant by leagues upon 
leagues of shrieking foam, were the fatal Goodwin 
Sands, where many a brave ship and brave life 
have left their bones. Twice during the storm 
they saw the lifeboat manned and launched into 



THE LADDER. 323 

the very heart of the tempest. Where it went, 
save into a great darkness, they could not see, nor 
did they see its return, with the half-drowned 
sailors of a collier at the bottom of the English 
Channel. 

The Ladder did not rock one quarter- inch in 
all that turmoil as Pemsy Villa had rocked so 
many. The House-in-which-one-may-not-throw- 
Stones was much nearer the sea than Pemsy 
Villa, so near in fact that the salt spray almost 
dashed its crystal front ; but it was too firmly 
backed by a cliff of Albion to shudder, even when 
the earth itself trembled beneath the booming 
breakers. Nevertheless the drawing-room was in 
a high state of excitement. Sheets of manuscript 
hopped and skipped all over the huge Brussels 
roses and green rep ; leaves of books took their 
own time and pleasure, or rather the wind's, in the 
matter of turning over ; the crystal side of the 
room seemed half a mind to come in altogether 
and spread itself on the hearthrug before the 
cheery fire. Again the paste-pot came into ser- 
vice, again every crack and crevice was thoroughly 
calked, and the Ladder put in ship-shape order. 

Then Nelhe came to assure herself that her 
timid city pair had not gone stark mad with terror, 
she brought up the tea-tray ; and inside the crystal 
swell, beside a ruddy grate, peace spread its fair 
pinions over the cosy five o'clock. 

But the Wine- Cellar ! 

Brother and Sister Americans, countrymen and 
women, fellow-citizens ! Have we not in all our 
homes some grim dark place into which no man 
or woman enters, and of which the children are 
afraid? Is it not darkly haunted by gnome-like 



324 HIRED FURNISHED. 

things, big-bellied and squat, wide-mouthed and 
iron-throated, hollow-faced and clanking, like 
chain-bound galley slaves? Are not unclean ob- 
jects often there, shapes which certainly are not 
of honor, even if not exactly of dishonor ? 

From a gloomy mystery of this sort under the 
lowest ladder of all, a Hirer one day withdrew a 
laughing face. 

" Call this a Wine-Cellar ? " he remarked; " we 
have no end of them at home. In the American 
language, they are pot-closets." 



CLOVER VILLA. 325 



CLOVER VILLA. 

" Not a gentleman," said he. 

'/ Mr. Pumpkin Hood was not a gentleman." 

" He did not pretend to be, which makes all the 
difference in the world. This man does. He 
does not know, however, that a gentleman would 
not ask concerning us of our banker, we having 
paid the whole term in advance. What can a 
banker tell save that our account is regular? We 
may be escaped convicts for all the ' London and 
County ' knows. This man's only idea of eligibility 
is a correct bank account." 

The lady was quite of the same opinion con- 
cerning the good breeding of the offerer of Clover 
Villa. His letters were in every way correct; but 
how could she forget the day on which she had 
made a journey into Sussex only to look at Clover 
Villa? Mr. Boxworthy had written her how to 
reach the villa. She must take a certain train from 
Victoria Station, arrive at Hailsham in time for the 
omnibus for Hurstmonceaux, which would leave the 
Hailsham station ten minutes after the train's arrival. 
She had followed the directions imphcitly, though 
to do so made a breathless departure necessary, 
before the house in Cavendish Square was awake. 
A hurried breakfast in the railway buffet, then an 
early morning ride and an early forenoon arrival 
at Hailsham, all as directed. But then, — 



326 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" 'Ersmunsoo bus ? " said men about the station ; 
" it does n't call for this train ; calls for the train 
an hour later." 

*•' Why did Mr. Boxworthy rend me from my bed 
at such an inconscionable hour, to strand me here in 
a most uninteresting town waiting the omnibus?" 
she murmured disconsolately. There was ample 
time for a lunch at a neighboring hotel, a saunter 
about the town, then the omnibus gathered wiser 
passengers than she, who had known enough to 
take the later train from London, and all set forth 
over the four miles to Hurstmonceaux. 

" Omnibus," it was called ; it was really one of the 
long, heavy, black and clumsy covered wagons with 
a seat upon each side, as in other omnibuses, but 
the centre filled with commissions from Hailsham, 
and for Hurstmonceaux, — groceries, wooden ware, 
iron ware, flour and feed, furniture, luggage, what- 
ever the little hamlet needed whither they were 
bound. There was scarcely room for the feet of 
the passengers who clung to the narrow seats as 
to a ledge upon a wall. The seats were thus 
narrow to enlarge the carrying capacity of the 
centre, filled now with both luggage and merchan- 
dise, the latter both added to and subtracted from 
by commissions at various shops and houses. The 
American noticed that everybody spoke of the 
thing as ^'carrier" not as ''omnibus." 

Mr. and Mrs. Boxworthy met her in Clover Villa, 

having driven from their own house in B in 

their pony cart. They had hired Clover Villa 
for their own summer use, they said, and furnished 
it for that purpose, but had concluded to let it to 
desirable tenants ; they expected four pounds a 
month, but could probably let it at those terms not 



CLOVER VILLA. 32/ 

more than six weeks 'of the summer; if the lady 
would take it for four months, as she said in her 
letters, she might have it at the rate of 15^". a week. 

The man never spoke to her without repeating 
her name. Over and over and over again, till she 
wearied of it, and would almost have welcomed the 
touch more of servility in the English shopman's 
incessant " Madam," even the cabman's and por- 
ter's " Lady." The wife was less effusive, and made 
a better impression, as vvives often do in England 
as well . as elsewhere, even though she alluded 
more than once to the "exceeding luxury" with 
which her own house was furnished. The stranger 
gave a guinea to make the bargain fast, and the 
man gave her a receipt for it, a perfectly proper 
and business-like proceeding. Never in any other 
hiring had she paid such a guinea or been offered 
such a receipt. The consequence was that she 
utterly forgot to take the receipt upon her return to 
London, but left it in Clover Villa, to receive it by 
post the very next day. "Strictly business-like," 
she thought, " but not in the least like our other 
hirings, where payment in advance has never been 
exacted, but always our own choice. 

" To-morrow I will send a check," she said, 
after binding the bargain with the guinea ; " now I 
must get the omnibus for that four-o'clock train 
from Hailsham." 

"What day is this?" said the man reflectively. 
" You see, Mrs. So-and-So, there is no return 
omnibus to Hailsham on any day except Saturday. 
But you can hire a carriage at the Woolpack, Mrs. 
So-and-So." 

" No doubt he is honest," thought Mrs. So-and- 
So, as she bowled along the pleasant road to 



328 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Hailsham at an expense greater than her fare from 
London ; *' but he is not a gentleman. He knew 
very well there was no return omnibus to-day ; he 
knew there would be one to-morrow ; he did not 
tell me, because he wished the affair concluded as 
soon as possible for his own convenience." 

These people did not fail to keep up the char- 
acter in which they first presented themselves. 
All summer long, until late October, the Ameri- 
cans realized how useless to try to steal the piano 
or to levant with the drawing-room carpet. They 
knew that the kitchen poker would be missed with- 
in an hour ; they would run into the very arms of the 
Boxworthys round some corner if they fled with a 
kitchen knife. When they left Clover Villa and gave 
up the keys, lo, the Boxworthys were fleeing Clover 
Villa-ward on the wings of the wind, as no owner 
had ever rushed upon the scene of their dishonesty 
before in all their hirings. It turned out afterwards 
that they were professionals in the way of furnished 

houses, and the " luxurious home " at B • was 

theirs for a home only in winter, being let during 
the summer, whfle the family lived in Clover Villa 
if it were unlet, or if it were let, took refuge in a 
four-roomed laborer's cottage at Battle. As one 
knows, there is a difference in manners, even the 
manner of letting a hired-furnished for the summer. 

"What under the sun are you intending to 
peddle?" 

No wonder he asked. No wonder he en- 
deavored to possess himself of the parcel. No 
wonder the lady tried to escape both question and 
the endeavor. 

" It 's only a little economy," she said, as airily 



CLOVER VILLA. 329 

as if it did not weigh as much as a raihvay train 
or a cathedral. 

" Little ! You carry it as if a ^ little economy ' 
was something to stagger under. Let me — " and 
he made another endeavor, again upon space. 

*' Unh-a-n-d me, V-i-1-l-a-i-n ! I assure you it 's 
only an economy ; 1 '11 prove it when we reach 
Hailsham." 

She dared not promise before that arrival lest he 
pitch her pedler's bag out of the train window. 

" I have made the boxes as light as possible ; 
but there are three of them, besides the boxes of 
books going down by goods-train, and they are 
heavy in spite of me. We shall have a pretty 
penny to pay for extra luggage ; the South Coast 
is notoriously the most niggardly and least oblig- 
ing railway in all England. We never pay extra 
on the Great Western, no matter what we have 
with us/' she remarked, as trippingly as if but a 
dainty hand-bag hung from her arm. 

To their surprise the porter who took charge of 
their luggage wheeled it directly to the train. 
There was no weighing, no receipt for extra lug- 
gage, everything seemed lovely and the South 
Coast enlarging its heart. 

When, established in their carriage,-the American 
gave the porter a shilling instead of the usual four- 
pence, the latter wore a disgusted face. 

" Ho, no, sir. Hit must be 'arf a crown at least. 
You see I didn't take hit to the horffice. If I 'ad 
you 'd 'a' been charged twenty shillin' for hextra." 

" Why did you not take it to the office as was 
your business ? It would be more honest to pay 
twenty shiHings there than sixpence here — " 

The train was about starting ; the porter re- 



330 HIRED FURNISHED. 

ceived his 'arf crown. The Americans felt like thiev- 
ish confederates ; the lady even worse, she felt, in 
fact, completely done, thoroughly ''sold," as she 
hoisted her disreputable pedler's sack from the 
floor where the porter had bestowed it, perhaps 
under the impression that they were small iron- 
mongers thus removing their stock-in-trade. She 
would have disputed nobody who asked the price 
of her shovels and tongs. 

" My two litde oil-stoves," she meekly confessed. 
*' I would not put them in the trunks because of 
their weight." 

He laughed. It would have been a bitter laugh 
were any bitterness in him. 

"We 've cheated the South Coast out of seven- 
teen shillings and sixpence," said he, " and carry 
our house furnishings ourselves. Clever confidence 
operators, are n't we ? " 

Clover Villa was extremely inviting as they dis- 
mounted, one from his bicycle, the other from the 
carrier-wagon, at its gate. It was enclosed witli a 
little garden and buried in shrubbery. The garden 
and villa were higher than the village street, and 
reached by two or three brick steps. The large 
bow window faced the street, but was separated by 
so leafy and bushy a growth of green that it was in 
almost as great seclusion as with a park before it. 
The front door was on the other side of the house, 
and opened upon the tiny garden and brick walk. 
Within, the " drawing-room " was one side of the 
front door, the dining-room the other ; beyond the 
latter, the kitchen with brick floor, whitewashed 
stone walls, cook-stove, sink, and kitchen-table, 
and open rows of shelves. Above, were two good 



CLOVER VILLA. 331 

square rooms, above them two airy and comfort- 
able attic chambers, decently furnished for servants, 
or for anybody in times of pressure upon accom- 
modations, as when^ for instance, during that 
exquisite summer a party of Harvard classmates 
of Mr. Clover's stopped on their way from the 
land of pumpkin pies to the land of the cypress 
and myrtle. 

"It is plain to see," said Mrs. Clover, "that 
Mrs. Boxworthy is a model housekeeper. She has 
delighted in furnishing and preparing the Villa, 
much as I dehghted in building a home in Dove 
Cottage. A house could not be more complete in 
the very small essentials that almost nobody thinks 
of till the need for them presents itself. Not only 
here is an abundance of bed-linen, not of superfine 
quality and not of [{?, premiere j'eimesse, though as 
white as driven snow, but also kitchen towels, flat- 
iron-holders, chamois-skin for the ' plate,' an iron- 
ing-board, even floor-cloths, glass and dish towels, 
stove-brushes, carpet-brush, sink-brush, floor-brush, 
every possible convenience for immaculate cleanli- 
ness. In no other hiring have we ever found such 
attention to detail. Even when we hire for only six 
weeks, we must furnish these or go without. I, you 
see, do neither. I manage that my staff of ser- 
vants shall bring them all from its own home, when 
our hiring is for less than months. Everything is 
as clean as clean can be ; the good English house- 
keeper I find a perfect paragon of neatness every- 
where. You see, Mr. and Mrs. Boxworthy enjoy 
this matter of building many littles into a whole ; 
it is their way of thrift, and their view of hfe and 
human destiny is minute, not comprehensive. 
Notice those chamber fenders, for instance. You 



332 HIRED FURNISHED. 

may knock your toes against them for a lifetime, 
and the toes never complain ; for the fenders are 
the very lightest of black-painted pine, our land- 
lord's own handiwork. He upholstered the draw- 
ing-room furniture himself; his wife made the chintz 
coverings; he made the toilet- tables of packing- 
boxes ; she covered them with book-muslin over 
pink cambric. The washstands were more than 
second-handed and decrepit, he strengthened and 
painted them ; he matched the missing legs of the 
dining-room chairs, and replaced that foot to the 
dining-room-table. Only that large wardrobe 
in the front chamber with its mirror, and the 
furnishing of the drawing-room, do not plainly 
show his clever handiwork ; yet even in the draw- 
ing-room the mantel clock is his work, the dial face 
marked with his own and his wife's name in place 
of the usual numerals. Yet the result is extremely 
good, the general effect one of refinement ; the 
drawing-room has none of the faded glare of the 
Wine-Cellar, and there 's not a muslin flower in 
the house. The drawing-room piano is no better 
than the Wine-Cellar's, but looks very much better ; 
there are solid iron fenders in dining-room and 
drawing-room, fire-irons, a goatskin rug, and a 
pretty and fresh carpet with lace curtains. We are 
living on a much grander scale than in dear Jersey, 
but—" 

" Yes," said he, with the ready comprehension 
of subtle differences that is not usually the mascu- 
line habit. " Yes — But — " Then he added 
consolingly, " Fortunately there are no entrance 
hall and no statues to Hve up to. You can live up 
to flat-iron-holders, I suppose." 

Whereby the masculine intelligence once more 



CLOVER VILLA. 333 

proved its total inefficiency to grasp the logic of 
experience and of facts. From what premise 
reasoned he that the partner of his hirings would 
not immediately transform every holder into a pen- 
wiper? From what fact of their mutual experi- 
ence did he conclude that she would not iron her 
ribbons and press her manuscripts, as she always 
had done, with the flat-iron grasped in a wad of 
paper ? What made him suppose she would waste 
precious time in remembering that somewhere 
behind the kitchen stove was a corpulent holder, 
when she had a kitchen towel, if not in her hand, at 
least closely near it? What gave him the right to 
suppose she could live up to the intricate and per- 
plexing conveniences of good housekeeping, when 
he knew that housekeeping was to her only a 
means of enjoyment of this glorious world in 
which we are for such a too-little season, not an 
end in itself, as the iron-holder woman so often 
makes it? 

" Nay, my beloved," she remarked impressively. 
" Never so long as a daisy blooms on the ground 
can I rise to the altitude of kitchen-holders." 

Indeed she fell so far below the iron-holder 
level that summer that when in crisp October they 
left Clover Villa, and took untold richness of 
pleasant memories with them to London, iron- 
holders were the only things the lady was obliged 
to replace. What Mrs. Boxworthy remarked to the 
inky ones left behind, she could only imagine. 

Not that there were no disruptive disasters 
among those fair-faced furnishings. Apparently 
the table-ware had fallen from the liigher estate of 
the " luxurious home." In falling into Clover 
Villa the vegetable dishes and covers had not 



334 HIRED FURNISHED. 

always fallen together. During four or five 
months rattling and sliding dish-covers need not 
drive a housekeeper into the state of gibbering 
idiocy they would surely drive her to after a 
longer period. The more immediate Clover re- 
sult in the paws of the Villa's "staff" was a somer- 
saulting that left every dish coverless at the end of 
the first month. The bits were carefully preserved 
in proof of the misfititude which made their doom. 
That proof, the owners, to do them justice, did 
not demand, but preserved a discreet silence on 
the subject. Skill and finesse had worked mir- 
acles with those vegetable dishes themselves. 
Why queer-shaped little bits should separate them- 
selves from the very substance of those dishes they 
could not at first even guess. They did not even 
guess that those bits ever had done so till their 
staff was heard loudly lamenting. Between tears 
and sobs, day after day, she showed little odd- 
shaped holes in various dishes, and in the hot 
water the bit that had matched and stopped each 
hole. 

" Never mind," said the housekeeper, who 
was not model but only cheerful " Never 
mind ! The potatoes are bigger than the holes, 
and can't slip through. I can put a small white 
dish inside this blue and majestic one when we 
have peas." 

The dining-room was not sunny, as the drawing- 
room was, all day. Yet here again had human 
thrift and ingenuity wrought a marvel. For some 
time Mrs. Clover did not solve the mystery of 
that streak of sunshine which every morning 
greeted her coming down to breakfast, a path of 
tender radiance inviting her feet to the kitchen- 



CLOVER VILLA. 335 

door, straightly across the north light of the only 
window. She did not ask why bright sunshine 
filled her spirit in an instant as her steps fell into 
that softly shining way, a way of chastened gold 
across the dull brown of the dining-room oilcloth. 

"Sunshine," smiled her Superior. "Just your 
way of finding it anywhere. That sunshiny path 
to me seems only a strip of new carpet of the same 
pattern of all the rest, but of a yellower color. A 
bit of bright patchwork, you see." 

It is a genuine English hamlet, untouched by 
change and remote from improvements, although 
not ancient as the word means in England. Its 
name dates from the Conquest and the marriage 
of one of the lords of Monceau, in Normandy, with 
the Saxon heiress of a family settled upon the 
place where are now only the picturesque ruins of 
a castle. The original hamlet gathered near this 
castle and about an ancient church (ruthlessly 
modernized) and a mighty tithe barn of the four- 
teenth century ; the comparatively modern village 
consists of dwellings thrust among ancient farm- 
houses a mile from the church for which it is 
named. These farm-houses give its old-world 
charm to the village, a charm evidently not ap- 
preciated by the corrugated-iron-dissenting-chapel 
folk whose artistic taste is best served by illumin- 
ated scripture-texts. One may imagine the in- 
terior of that house opposite the village store upon 
which the illuminated-text taste has twisted and 
tortured a vine to spell " Praise the Lord," in 
green letters three feet long. Though Sussex itself 
is notoriously flat, the land is beautifully undulat- 
ing, in this region rising sometimes to fairly re- 
spectable little eminences. From every one of 



33^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

these little eminences are exquisite views of many 
silent villages as white and vaporous as midsummer 
snow. From out these snowy drifts always rises a 
great Alpine flower, or rather a mystic blossom 
dropped through white clouds from singing pro- 
cessions of angels. Sometimes all day long for 
days these angelic flowers bloomed upon the 
golden distance, till one almost thought he saw the 
heavenly gardens in which they grew. Some- 
times again the snowdrifts disappear in the vista- 
less dullness of the day, and the clearest eye could 
discover nothing more where the flower of Heaven 
had bloomed than a mere spectral stalk, leafless 
and wan, a very ghost of a flower fallen from the 
clouds so long ago that nothing of its origin re- 
mained. Then again, even in days less dull, the 
sight searched even for the stalk in vain ; the 
green slants, the vague distance, the pale horizon, 
would be as void of them as if they had never 
bloomed, or as if they had been caught up again 
to heaven. This mystery of bloom and fading, 
this continual enchantment of radiance and noth- 
ingness, haunted the Clovers. They could not 
forget, wherever they were, that the miracle was 
still at work. All sununer long they sought the 
laugliing httle slopes and stood there seeking this 
strangeness of bloom and blight. 

Thus were they the transcendent simpletons 
human beings must always be with more imagi- 
nation than reason. Many and many a mile 
they walked and wheeled that summer merely 
to find exactly what they knew they should find, 
no heavenly flower at all, only an ugly, groaning 
windmill. 

Sussex, being flat and without streams, grinds all 



CLOVER VILLA. 337 

its com with these mills. It is wonderful that 
they have not gone more into English poetry, for 
no shadowy ship upon the sea's horizon has more 
poetic effect than they ; no angel of Paradise ever 
swept fairer wings through the gray of the dusky 
hours. 

The Clovers reminded each other in wonder 
that only as noisy chatterers are these white vis- 
ions usually mentioned. Even Stevenson, who 
carried the glamour of his artistic temperament al- 
most everywhere, failed to recognize their haunting 
effect in a landscape. He saw them, but only as 
everybody sees them, near at hand, busy, garrulous 
mechanics at work, never spiritualized by the Ely- 
sian atmospheres of distance. "There are in- 
deed," he wrote, " few merrier spectacles than 
that of many windmills bickering together in a 
fresh breeze over a woody country ; their halting 
alacrity of movement, their pleasant business, mak- 
ing bread all day with uncouth gesticulations, their 
air gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, 
put a spirit into the tamest landscape. When a 
Scotch child sees them first, he falls immediately 
in love, and from that time forward windmills 
keep turning in his dreams." This is the canny 
Scot, to the life — " making bread all day," thriftily, 
even though with uncouth gesticulations to enliven 
a landscape. 

Our American Indians showed more imagina- 
tion in their terror of the ''great white birds;" 
but even with the Indians it was less terror of 
their mystery of swirling wings and incompre- 
hensible speech answering to the mystery of the 
many-voiced winds, than of their monster teeth 
bitincf the corn of the Dutch colonists of New 

O 

22 



33^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

Netherlands. The red men never saw them as 
ghosts of white winds doomed to sad penance on 
earth in the service of these mites of men. 

A Knight of the Rueful Countenance is our 
chief literary association with windmills. And that 
knight we cover with undying ridicule, and fix his 
name to every windy scheme and whimsical ad- 
venture, to valor without reason and honor with- 
out sense, because he saw giants where we see 
only — windmills. 

Hotspur, with Shakespeare behind him in Henry 
IV., lacked the inspired vision of Don Quixote, 
and heard in their complaining only the airy 
gibber that most men hear. For he would rather 
eat garlic and cheese and live in a windmill, than 
with a complaining wife. 

" You see," said a Clover, " windmills belong 
to low countries without water courses ; and flat- 
land people never have the imagination of hill-top 
folk. That 's the reason they are so very httle in 
English poetry and romantic prose. De Tabley's 
poem is almost the only one ; do you remember 
it?" 

Remember it, indeed ! At least this much, — 

" Emblem of Life, whose roots are torn asunder, 
An isolated soul that hates its kind, 
Who loves the region of the rolling thunder 
And finds seclusion in the misty wind. 

" Type of a love that wrecks itself to pieces 
Against the barriers of relentless Fate, 
And tears its lovely pinions on the breezes 
Of just too early, or just too late. 

" Emblem of man, who after all his moaning, 
And strain of dire immeasurable strife, 
Has yet this consolation all atoning — 

Life, as a windmill, grinds the bread of Life." 



CLOVER VILLA. 339 

Tradition and some histories tell that these 
wind spirits (let us avoid the word "mills") were 
brought home to Europe by Crusaders from the 
Holy Land. As the tradition has a suggestion of 
romance about it; a bit of poetry in its counte- 
nance, it of course has many contradicters. Some 
of these say, and their words are not foohsh, they 
being learned archaeologists, that mills were in 
Western Europe before the Crusaders, although 
not in France and England before the twelfth 
century. In 121 6, Matthew Paris mentions the 
overthrow of many of them by a great storm ; but 
before that mighty wrestle of the bond and the 
free they were in Normandy about 11 80. At the 
battle of Lewes, May, 1264, during the flight of 
the troops of Henry HI. before the victorious 
barons, Richard King of the Romans, the king's 
younger brother, took refuge in a windmill, bar- 
ring the door, and for a long while defending him- 
self from the fury of his pursuers. He was finally 
obliged to come out amid derisive cries. " Come 
out, you bad miller, you lazy mill master." A 
ballad of this event is among Percy's " Reliques." 
Chaucer mentions a windmill in the " House of 
Fame," and Dante in the " Inferno." 

" Let them rave," said the least wise of the 
Clovers. " Let them archxologically rave of their 
windmills before the Crusades. I don't believe a 
word of it ! For me the Cross-bearers saw them 
first, beckoning on the pale plains of Palestine. 
They saw them just as we see them, far away and 
ethereal, beings of an elemental world entirely un- 
like this to which they are bound. The returned 
Crusaders, with their travellers' yarns, never for- 
got their solemn beauty on mystic horizons ; 



340 HIRED FURNISHED. 

and troubadours sang to harp and viol of their 
angelic floating in the hot winds of that fabulous 
clime. Then came some coarse Crusader, crusad- 
ing, you may be sure, for booty, not duty, who 
told what practical works these mysterious visions 
could do : not till then did Englishmen capture 
for their own service these sad children of the 
white winds." 



No railway whistle disturbed the peace of the 
village, no distant rumble of trains. The only 
excitements were the arrival at three o'clock of 
the postman on his tricycle, who served half a 
dozen hamlets, and the carrier-wagon bringing pas- 
sengers and London papers from the same train. 

The village post-office is an antique farm-house 
in a Shakespearian garden, the postmistress, a 
dusky widow with such a knack at harmless but 
piquant gossip as made her one of Mrs. Clover's 
most valued cronies. The village streets — there 
were two of them, both highways serving many 
scattered little hamlets — were as silent all through 
the long summer days as if all the world slept. 
At times the voices of children were heard at play, 
the lowing of distant cattle, the restless neighing 
of horses (who have no right to the privileges of 
"dumb" animals), and the sound of the village 
anvil answering the hammer. 

Occasionally farm-wagons drove by, sometimes 
a light carriage, oftener the pedler's wagons, upon 
which remote villages so much depend ; but for 
much of the time the bees and the birds had all 
to themselves. 

Several gentlemen's houses are within a mile or 
two, and the rectory is somewhat famous in religi- 



CLOVER VILLA. 341 

ous biography, having been the home of Arch- 
deacon Hare, known to pious American readers 
chiefly for his relationship to the lady who caused 
the book, '' Memorials of a Quiet Life," and whose 
home was here, but who seems to have left almost 
no impression upon the memory of the village. 
Otherwise than these more imposing homes, the 
village is entirely rustic, its few villas quite of the 
Clover order, its humbler but ten thousand times 
more charming (to look at) dwelHngs of the rural 
English village kind, with thatched or tiled roofs, 
stone or half timbered walls, all half buried in liv- 
ing green. There was one gloomy general store, 
from which came equally sugar, sewing silk, and 
shoes, millinery, matches, and marmalade. Upon 
the garden of this general store Clover Villa 
depended, until Mrs. Clover learned the way to 
other gardens. In the garden back of the black- 
and-red-roofed post-office she found the earliest 
apples, and straightway ate them up. The tree 
in the cobbler's garden became flecked with gold, 
and was rapidly consumed by the Villa, followed 
in time by the tree a mile or two away, over- 
topping a straw roof with eaves scarcely six feet 
from the ground, under which lived, in antique 
twilight, the wife of a gardener at the Great House 
close by. Under these trees how many of the 
gossiping chats in which Mrs. Clover dehghted, 
when gossipers unconsciously opened to her a 
fascinating field of peculiar habits, and of char- 
acters shaped by an environment so different 
from her own into an ever fresh romance. She 
was supposed to be a Londoner ; that she might 
be an American never entered heads to whom 
America is as far as China ; and many a sly laugh 



342 HIRED FURNISHED. 

no doubt was laughed at the Londoners who do 
not know when the hop-season opens, and mistake 
oast houses for turrets of chateaux. 

From the baker's garden came lettuce and 
peas, until the Clovers and the baker ate them all ; 
whereupon Mrs. Clover began her intimacy with 
the primly-pretty and sweet-voiced wife of the 
village saddler, from whose garden came the 
vegetable -marrow which the purchaser once mis- 
called summer squash, to the intense amusement 
of the saddler's wife. There were no h 's astray 
in her dainty speech, and no suspicion of such 
wandering among the aspirates of the postmistress 
(who was not a Sussex but a Norfolk woman). 
But when the tidy young wife of the cobbler and 
her tidy children called at Clover Villa, or Mrs. 
Clover gossiped with her under the apple tree, 
or beside the poles of green beans, Sussex as- 
pirates went fairly mad with delirious joy at find- 
ing so many soft places into which to nestle. 
The postmistress, Mrs. Clover soon learned, was 
step-mother to the saddler, and the feud was 
bitter between post-office and saddlery, be- 
tween letters and leather. Each confided the 
story of wrong to the supposed Londoner, who 
received each as never suspected before, yet who 
thus was reminded anew that human nature is 
the same in a tranquil Sussex hamlet as in an 
American country village where wrongs that really 
are not wrongs at all are brooded over and kept 
warm for a lifetime, and families one in name and 
blood live side by side, never so much as seeing 
each other. The son of the village postmistress 
was half-brother to the saddler, and neither had 
wronged the other so far as the postmistress and 



CLOVER VILLA. 343 

the saddler's wife told, yet they lived within 
hourly sound of each other's voices, their trees 
dropped fruit upon each other's ground, they 
attended the same dissenting chapel, yet a wall 
colder than stone, harder than adamant, forever 
divides them. Sometimes the saddler's pretty 
daughter brought plums and berries to the Villa, 
as soft voiced as her mother, the same soft pink 
complexion and the same bronze-gold ringlets 
hanging quaintly beside her face, even as our 
mothers wore ringlets, as they still wear them in 
their youthful portraits. The saddler's wife has 
been ringleted all her life, as doubtless her 
mother was ringleted from her cradle to her 
grave ; and the saddler's wife has never thought 
to do else than twist her child's beautiful hair in 
stiff curl-papers every night since her hair became 
long enough to twist. The pretty child will grow 
up with her ringlets, and will learn her trade of 
the village dressmaker without changing them. 
Then will come the village swain to swear his 
adoration of ringlets ; when the bride sets up 
housekeeping within her pretty mother's sight, 
what is to prevent quaint, papered ringlets from 
going on for generations ? 

The saddler's wife is as cheerful as she is 
pretty, as trim and neat as she is chatty. Her 
daughter, her little toy and paper shop, and her 
housekeeping, filled her heart and time to the 
exclusion of yearnings, even such as haunted the 
cobbler's wife. She did not torment the future 
with questions ; but she hked to remember the 
past, and her American gossip rejoiced to hear 
her. 

" Was it a love-match? " " No, I should not call 



344 HIRED FURNISHED. 

it one from what I read in books of love-matches," 
she said. " Girls in the country do not make 
such marriages, it seems to me. People cannot 
love till they know each other ; and how can they 
know each other till they are married? I suppose 
I married my husband because he has no palate." 

Mrs. Clover had recognized this lack in the 
saddler's speech. Yet she showed her surprise 
that the lack should have won so desirable a wife. 

" I came to school near here in that ivy- covered 
house on Windmill Green. My husband was also 
a pupil there ; but I never should have known it 
had I not heard the other pupils mocking his im- 
pediment. I took occasion to scold them, and to 
make friends with him, but never to any great 
extent. Then I went home and never thought of 
him for years. I was twenty-five years old, and 
working at my trade, when one day I chanced to 
be driving with some friends, and we stopped at 
an inn. Who should come up but my husband ! 
1 should never have recognized him; he knew me 
the instant he sat eyes upon me [those ringlets]. 
We talked of schooldays ; he came to see me ; in 
a year we were married, and there — my cabbage 
greens are boiling all over the stove — don't go, 
I '11 be back in a minute ! " 

The saddler's wife must be superior to her 
position ; she was certainly superior to m.ost of her 
kind in New England rustic villages. Not only 
was her language and pronunciation more correct, 
but her acquaintance more active with the tradi- 
tions and stories of the neighborhood. She could 
always recognize, from Mrs. Clover's description, 
any far away mansion, farm, or cottage come upon 
in the long expeditions of the two Clovers, and 



CLOVER VILLA. 345 

was ready with some bit of history or legend that 
made the object doubly interesting. 

"That fine old mansion," she said of a certain 
delightful Jacobean picture, " is at a place called 
Carter's Corners.- If you go to the churchyard of 
Hurstmonceaux church and stand in a certain 
place among graves marked ' Potts/ you can just 
see it, miles away in the distance. It once belonged 
to the Potts family ; when the head of the family 
died, he desired to be buried in a part of the church- 
yard from which the mansion could be seen." 

The Americans had often stood on the very 
spot. Mrs. Clover wished she could ask Mrs. 
Saddler of certain of her own acquaintances, formed 
among Sussex Archaeological Journals, to whom she 
gave many thoughts whenever she stood in that 
hill churchyard with its famous view, and, alas, its 
modernized aspect. She wished she could ask 
about Elyn Frankly n and William Longley, Thomas 
Bulke and John Honwyn, — all of whom were now 
the mould of Hurstmonceaux churchyard. But she 
knew how the pretty woman's eyes would stare at 
the very thought of knowing those Tudor English- 
men, whose wills only have kept their names on 
earth. William Longley, on the 28th of March, 
1543, a husbandman of Hyrstmownsex, be- 
queathed his sowle into the hands of Almighty 
God the Father, to our Lady St. Mary, and to all 
the glorious company of hevyn, and his body to 
be buried within the churchyard of Hyrstmownsex. 
" Item, I will to be done for my sowle and all 
christian sowles thirteen masses, one barill of 
beere & a bushell of whete to be bake in brede & 
one fat shepe to be bake in pyes to refreshe the 
povyrte of the parishe." John Honwyn was also 



34^ HIRED FUKNISIIED. 

buried in " cburcherthe," and willed that every 
priest at his burial, " to have for dirge and mass 
8^." John willed 4^'/. to each of his god-chil- 
dren, " Best redde petycote, whyte fustyan 
doublett, blew cote with buttons, to James Swift, 
also old redde petycote & pair of whyte hose." 
In 1540, Richard Franklyn willed to Elyn, his 
daughter, " 2 kyne, 2 tolmontyngis, i pot, i panne, 
I quern, i foleing table, i chere, i akere of whete, 
I of Otis, I fedar bede, i bolster, i paire shetes, 
I blanket, i catel, i hog of i halfe-yere olde, all 
weanis, plewis, tyllis & yokis " (wagons, ploughs, 
harrows and yokes). 

They are all of churchyard mould now, Elyn 
with the rest, dug over and over again with the 
spades, and for the dead of three centuries and a 
half. So, however Mrs. Clover longed to know 
how Elyn managed with but one pair of sheets 
and one blanket, one pot, one pan, and one chair, 
with evidently all her husbandman father's farm 
to carry on, it was of no use to ask, not even to 
ask what clod beneath one's feet was once these 
warm beating hearts. 

" But you ought to know what a tolmontyngis 
was," Mrs. Clover complained to Mrs. Saddler. 

Mrs. Saddler shook her head. 

She might have retorted, " Why I more than yon, 
since Tudor Englishman were as much your an- 
cestors as mine." 

Another time they spoke of Hurstmonceaux 
Castle, which, to Mrs. Clover's disappointment, had 
never been defended against assault by a woman, 
but only weakly haunted by one. 

" She must be a great fool of a ghost, " said the 
saddler's wife. " She tried to be very poetic and 



CLOVER VILLA. 347 

tragic, so gave out that she was starved to death 
by a cruel governess. The truth was slie starved 
herself, trying to get a slim waist. Ghosts are 
usually humbugs, don't you think so?" 

Mrs. Clover did think so, although she would 
give the world to see one that was not, and sought 
flesh-creepiness as she ought to seek wisdom. 
She asked them if the castle had ever known 
another ghost, a woman dressed always in white, 
and riding a milk-white palfrey with a milk-white 
doe running forever by her side. Mrs. Saddler 
had never heard of any such ghost, speaking only 
Greek to its English children, and living in semi- 
squalid grandeur in the castle, when not displaying 
its picturesqueness abroad. Evidently this lady, a 
very much affected one, and preposterously silly, 
haunts elsewhere. She was a wife of one of the 
Hares who owned the castle for a generation or 
two, and whose descendant was Archdeacon Hare. 
One day, in the course of a milky-palfrey and milky- 
doe display, dogs set upon the latter and killed 
it, upon which the Hare ran away from the 
hounds and refused ever to inhabit the castle again. 
In " Memorials of a Quiet Life," by that indefatiga- 
ble book- manufacturer, Augustus J. C. Hare, the 
story of this airy poseiise, whose maiden name 
ought to have been March, is told with all the 
solemnity proper in writing of an ancestral Hare. 
He does not mention that the fantastic creature's 
widower speedily remarried, taking a bride who 
never rode a white palfrey through English lanes 
with a white doe running beside her white self, 
and who never conversed in Greek with her Eng- 
lish children. This second marriage produced 
children as well as the first, and they put up a 



34^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

tablet to their mother's memory beside their 
father's in Hurstmonceaux church. Mr. Augustus 
JuHus Cuthbert Hare gives a most elaborate and 
detailed description of the mural decorations and 
inscriptions of this church in his " Sussex," but 
leaving out entirely mention of the tablet to this 
second wife. 

Mrs. Clover regretted that the palfrey lady did 
not haunt the lanes about the castle. It would 
have been worth a double admission fee to see her. 

Of all the American's acquaintances, the cob- 
bler's fair wife was the only one who mourned an 
ever-escaping ideal. The postmistress was con- 
tent with her work, and above all with her son, 
whose dazzling proficiency in foreign languages had 
arrived at writing without fault, Le marchand a les 
Soulier s du tailleiir ; the gardener's wife asked only 
of fate that it send less rain to mould her toma- 
toes. When the cobbler's wife lamented, " Ah ! " 
thought Mrs. Clover, '' if but we Americans could 
mourn in such a ring-dove voice even grief would 
be a blessing to us as a nation." 

The cobbler's wife was twenty-four with five 
children and a pensive face. She never left home 
without the five ; the children never left their 
house except as pinks of neatness. They were 
pinks from under a shower, and everything they 
wore was damp, wrung from the basin five minutes 
before they were dressed. 

"Hit's a great care," murmured the gentle 
voice, — "a great care to have so many. You never 
know wat may 'appen the minute your heyes are 
hoff. 'Tis n't as hif we was wat I hexpected wen I 
married. I 'ad hideas then, as girls mostly 'as ; I 
thought hi married a shoemaker, but, to tell the 



CLOVER VILLA. 349 

truth," — her bkie eyes here grew moist, — '' to tell 
the truth he don't make a pair of shoes a year. 
Nobody can make 'em better ; he longs and prays to 
make 'em ; we dream at night that he 's made a pair 
for the rector's daughter or Lady Chatterton, and 
that everybody admires 'em. I tell 'im in the morn- 
ing how beautiful they looked, how proud their arch 
from the 'eel was ; and he tells me how loving he 
drew every thread. Then he says, ' 'T was but a 
fleeting dream, Hethel, but sometimes dreams 
come true ; hile finish every bit of cobbling in 
the shop, then hawait my Shoes.' He goes to 
work very silent till the very last patch, then he 
puts 'em hall hout of sight in a row, and looks first 
at me then down the road. You could see he 
was hexpecting something. Sure enough, there 
was the rector's carriage driving hup ; I never saw 
Hedward look so strange. ' Hit 's a border for 
shoes at last, Hethel ! ' he wispers. We both blush 
for joy wen Miss HeUis henters with no sign of a 
parcel. Then says she, ' There 's hate pairs of 
boots hand shoes to mend. Hi 've left hum in the 
carriage.' My 'art haked for poor Hedward." 

Probably also his for you, poor wistful spirit, 
neither of you realizing that yours is but a com- 
mon fate, to pursue an ever elusive Ideal, with 
only cobbling by the way. 

" Very touching," said Mrs. Clover, " but I am 
obliged to say that the sewing she did for me was 
entirely on the cobbling plane, not the ideal." 

The Idealist, the charwoman mother of S. S., 
and the washerwoman Elphick formed a circle of 
the village society. Although Mrs. Clover received 
and visited the first two, she never attempted to 
enter the circle, and thus never saw Mrs. Elphick, 



350 HIRED FURNISHED. 

who washed for the Villa. It was enough to see 
her daughter, an insolent young hussy of fourteen, 
with character and manners evidently acquired in 
her father's stable, rather than at her mother's 
honest washtub. There was a prance in her gait ; 
her neck was oftenest curveting ; she seemed to 
repress a neigh when she brought or took away 
the clothes. No bend was in her back from 
washtub service ; her dress was always as good as 
that of the saddler's petted daughter, who must 
have been a degree above her, amid the subtle 
distinctions of an English village. The Clovers 
looked with some interest upon this ill-bred young 
vixen, for she bore one of the most ancient and 
most dignified of Sussex names. Her far-away 
forbears were gentlemen living upon their own land, 
saying to this man, 'Come,' to that man, 'Go,' 
and obeyed with deference. They had the man- 
ners of the Sussex gentry, rough enough compared 
with those of modern gentry no doubt, but infi- 
nitely superior to those of their nineteenth-century 
descendant, who would jeer at their spelling and 
their pronunciation, and who has examples of far 
better behavior than her own every day before her 
eyes, if only in poor "S. S.," the Villa's staff of 
servants. 

" Is it the high blood in her that makes her 
curvet and prance and neigh insolence with every 
breath ? " the Clovers asked each other of this 
English girl. " Is it a restless, proud instinct of 
race, pricked and goaded by consciousness of the 
maternal washtub and the paternal carrier- wagon? 
Or is it the washtub and wagon instinct that knows 
no better? " 

Only echo answered, " Knows no better." 



"6-.^." 351 



"S. S." 

" Silly Sussex " was lank and long, like the 
days in which everything goes right and nothing 
goes wrong. She was shambling and loose-jointed, 
and although less than seventeen had no teeth 
to look at although many to speak of. It was 
rare to see her without at least one pasty cheek 
violently swollen, usually two, and at every blunder 
brought home to her those poor relics received 
the blame. Her eyes were pale and a fieiir-de-ieie 
(or "tater/' a Clover remarked). The watery 
blue orbs never wavered in their dead solemnity 
of outlook beyond this fleeting world. They were 
the awful eyes of a soul "wropt in mistry," re- 
flecting nothing finite, absorbing nothing earthly, 
like an inch-deep pool. She was of Sussex since 
Saxon days, and her speech bewrayed it. Her 
ois were all eyes and her th was often d, — dis, dat, 
for this and that. How many times her plough- 
man and milkmaid ancestors have inter-married 
none may know ; but from her wretched physique, 
her poor thin blood, and skeleton ever cracking 
at its joints, one may imagine those inter-marriages 
to have been many. The traditional Sussex Sil- 
liness in her was doubled, looped, knotted, twisted ; 
no two distinct lines of ancestry could ever have 
had such tangled wits as hers. In the olden days 
Sussex men were whipped as vagrants if found 



352 HIRED FURNISHED. 

too far away from home, even though within 
Sussex borders. In 1615, Robert Kinge was thus 
whipped for being out of his native parish. A few 
years earlier, Robert would not have escaped so 
easily, but been hanged as a gypsy, choicest fruit of 
the gallows-tree at that time. The Clovers felt in- 
tense sympathy and fellowship with young Robert 
Kinge, never grown older to the world's knowledge 
than at the fifteen years of his immortal whipping. 
They would have called back to him through 
almost three centuries, had it been possible, that 
they too felt that same hunger for the horizon 
for which he was whipped ; they too knew the 
enchantments of distance : yet they had never had 
half the whippings they deserved, while he had had 
at least one too many. 

'' Silly Sussex " was always " S. S." before her 
face, and never asked why she was not Martha as 
at home. As the Clovers so often spake an unin- 
telligible lingo in her presence she probably sup- 
posed all Marthas were " 6*. 6"." in the far land 
whence they came. 

" S. S." came only for the morning's work. She 
early displayed such consummate genius in the 
way of mistakes that Madam Clover was obHged 
'to keep an eye, even two eyes, upon her most of 
the time. Also to unlearn certain of her habits of 
speech. Several times it chanced that S. S. dis- 
appeared in the very midst of the morning's work, 
and came no more that day. There stood the 
little market basket, and its prepared list, just 
where it had been placed awaiting her errand to 
the garden from which Clover Villa was suppHed. 
The dining-room was not dusted : the parlor mats 
were loosely lying about the front door; no water 



"S. sr 353 

was in the pails. The third time this happened, 
one Clover complained to the other. 

" You say you did not send her for anything ? " 
asked that other. 

" Of course not. The other two times I asked 
her what she meant by quitting in the midst of the 
work, and she replied by being even more " wropt 
in mistry ' than usual." 

" What was she doing last? " 

A sudden light dawned upon a Clover, " She 
was helping me turn the mattresses. When they 
were turned I said, ' Now you may go/ I did not 
add, ' to your work.' " 

" She evidently stood not upon the order of her 
going, but went at once." 

" Has the rector's daughter lost her eyesight ? " 
her mistress one day asked S. S. Silly Sussex 
looked mysteriously away from finite things and 
with sibylline vagueness answered : — 

" She has lost her husband." 

"Subtle Sussex," called a voice from outside the 
door, " don't you see, she means she lost in him 
the light of her eyes." 

S. S. was extremely slow of motion. 

" Come, fly round," said her mistress. S. S. 
stared beyond time into the depths of eternity as 
she answered, unhasting like the eternal stars : 

" Dunno how." 

" Vo7i need n't laugh," said he, when the Missis 
repeated this to him. " When Billings, the baker, 
told you he was late because he had 'overlaid,' 
and that now he must ' move,' you gravely asked, 
' Move where ? ' as if all his sfoods and chattels 
were in the little hand-cart in which he brings 
round the bread. He then seemed as bewildered 



354 HIRED FURNISHED. 

as you were, although you both claim to speak 
English. Had you told S. S. 'Come move/ she 
would still have stared poor Eternity out of coun- 
tenance, but she would have understood you." 

S. S. told that her father's grave was at N., an 
adjoining parish, whither the vagrant Clovers often 
walked with never a fear of the whipping-post, 
before which they always stopped to gaze and 
grimly meditate, on the way. It was easy to 
fancy ghosts there in the dim of the evening, 
when the ghostly wind, a thousand centuries old, 
and with a thousand centuries of bitter memories, 
sighed through the rough field. Easy to recog- 
nize the wretched spectres of Anne, " whipped for 
a waygoer," of Alice, "whipped for a runegate," 
and Jane, " whipped for a rogue," of the Johns, 
Williams, Roberts, whipped for many things be- 
sides a wicked curiosity to know how men lived 
and trees grew in the " furrin parts " of an adjoin- 
ing parish. 

" We must look for your father's grave, some- 
time," said the Clovers. " Has he a gravestone ? " 

" He had a wooden leg," replied the " Mistry- 
Wropt." 

One afternoon the Missis came in to tea with 
three invited guests. She brought with her a 
paper-bag of sweet cakes from the oven-like shop 
of baker Billings (from whose ancient Sussex 
family Billingsgate was named) and three tiny 
packets of tea, the small currency with which she 
was wont to roam Sussex by-ways alone when her 
companion was too deep in his books to lead her 
in wider and more decorous ways. This small 
currency brought her many a curious history, that 
would have stopped often at stocks and whipping- 



"S.s:' 355 

post in other days. They brought her so many a 
moment's nearness to the life that held so much 
of poetry for her, that more than once she came 
liome to beg her tyrant to let her go, away, away 
from roofs and walls, that she might become an 
" Egyptian," and know starlight better than lamp- 
light, and stand in the stocks, and be whipped at 
the whipping-post, with never a bit of starch in her 
petticoats again so long as she lived, or a ribbon 
to her name. 

"Silly Sussex" chanced to be in the house 
doing some extra cleaning. She was enough as- 
tonished to drop her " house flannel " as the Missis 
escorted her guests to the kitchen, and gave them 
cool water in which to lave, and invited them to 
shake themselves free of dust in the garden-path. 
Two of them were time and travel, but not beer, 
stained ; yet Silly Sussex almost blubbered that she 
served a " Wild Woman " who could bring home 
tramp parents and their child to tea. 

*' 'Op-pickers ! " she ejaculated, with energy that 
quite amazed her mistress. 

Hop-pickers of course, the whole countryside 
had swarmed with them for weeks. Every day 
two, four, six of them knocked at the front- door 
begging hot water for their afternoon tea. Every 
day the Americans saw groups of them by the 
roadside, sleeping off the fatigue of a long tramp, 
sometimes the wife making iron-holders or knitting 
dish-cloths, while the husband slept. They were 
a decent sort, a sort that chose a tramp of many 
days into fair Sussex, rather than the horrible 
companionship and orgies of East Londoners 
crowding into nearer Kent. These were usually 
decently dressed; they carried their batterie de 



35^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

cuisine on their backs ; they answered respectfully 
when addressed. The only ones among them who 
ever begged were stout single men, who made but 
a bare pretence of wiUingness to " cleave some 
wood " in return for a bit of luncheon. 

Therefore her mistress's idea of " 'op-pickers " 
was not that of Silly Sussex, a hop-picker herself 
in the season, but always in one garden, never 
tramping miles for a job. There are social grades 
even among " 'op-pickers." 

When the somewhat abashed company was 
ready, the hostess called to S. S. to make the tea. 
The lank, blank maid received the order in silence, 
as was her habit. Then neither tea-pot or S. S. 
came, until the Missis, having made her choice of 
iron-holders and dish-cloths, grew impatient and 
called again, " Martha, have n't you made the 
tea?" 

The Mistry Wropt appeared in the doorway 
with pale eyes to say, — 

" Dunno how to make tea. My mother always 
buys hers." 

" For mercy's sake, what do you do when you 
put tea in a tea-pot and pour boiling water 
over it ? " 

The Mistry Wropt withdrew her gaze from Eter- 
nity, to rest her eyes upon perhaps the thirtieth 
century, as she answered almost cheerfully : — 

'' Wet the tea." 

"Do you suppose," said he, "that she would 
stoop to any unasked explanation before common 
'op-pickers?" 

Poor Silly Sussex, she had left a situation as 
farm drudge, with wages of eighteen pence a week, 
to serve in Clover Villa (at four shillings) — what 



''s.s." 357 

wonder she found things queer, and the queerest 
of all a mistress who tea'd with tramps and ex- 
pected /lar to make tea. 

"Idiot ! " spurted a Clover. 

" Do you suppose she considers you anything 
better," said he, " when she remembers the stove ? " 

'' Don't tell me," said the other with warmth. 
" Don't tell pte that she remembers anything ! 
How should I know the difference between two 
sorts of blacking ! She had n't gumption enough 
to laugh when I undertook to teach her to black 
the cooking-stove." 

" With boot-blacking ! " added the other. 
*' But never mind, she did n't have a fit even 
though she gasped when you told her always to 
wash the dish-cloths after washing the dishes. 
She knows you are a maniac ; you know she is 
Silly Sussex : so it 's heads I win, tails you lose, 
with both of you." 

One day starting upon an absence of many hours 
in pursuit of Windmills, her Mistress enjoined upon 
S. S. to leave the usual covered pitcher outside 
the kitchen door for the evening's milk, and to 
be sure not to close the dining-room windovv at 
the top, for, over it, the baker always dropped 
the evening's breakfast-rolls. 

S. S. made every promise, with blank eyes lying 
loosely upon a certain lace fichu that she was sus- 
pected of dimly admiring, and that her mistress 
refrained from giving her, only because it was so 
absurdly unsuitable to her person and condition. 
(When the summer ended and the Villa closed, 
the rags of the fichu were cast into the ash-bin. 
The next Sunday S. S. wore them to church.) 

After dinner that niglit in an inn eight miles 



35^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

away, the Clovers came home. All the brick pave- 
ment of the little garden was streaked, spotted, 
splashed, puddled with milk. Mr. Clover straight- 
way named it, " The Milky Way." 

Mrs. Clover ran to the kitchen door. The 
pitcher lay upon its broken side with every ap- 
pearance of having burst from a surfeit of bread 
and milk. 

Then the lady lamented both loud and deep 
that S. S. had tightly closed the dining-room win- 
dow, as it had not been closed for weeks, the 
baker had stuffed the rolls into the pitcher, the 
milkmaid had turned the milk in upon the rolls. 

" Unmitigated Fools ! " she remarked so many 
times, so emphatically, and in such various ways, 
that the other grew somewhat tired of hearing it. 

" It 's ' Silly Sussex/ of course, all round," he 
explained; " Borde's 'foles of Gottam,' were only 
two miles from that bread and milk, upon which 
the dogs have regaled themselves. Probably our 
maid's grandparents were ' foles of Gottam.' At 
any rate, we are no worse served than was poor 
Counsellor Burrell." 

They had just been reading Counsellor Burrell's 
diary, and found it one of the most entertaining 
and picturesque of all the seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth century diaries unearthed by the Sussex 
Archaeological Society. Counsellor Burrell illus- 
trated his diary in a sort of missal fashion, with 
pen and ink upon the margins. Pipes, tankards, 
snuff-boxes, runaway-servants, kitchen and garden 
implements, old crones, night-caps, make those 
margins almost a history of themselves. 

" Never such creatures in the world before ! 
Oh, for the decent, docile, well-trained servants, of 
the good old times ! " 



''S. s:' 359 

It is the nineteenth century who thus moans 
over the utter decay of domestic service. It is 
a way the centuries have of grumbling that ear- 
lier ones have taken the cream of all things. But 
Madame Nineteenth Century has not the last 
word, or rather moan. Up pops the seventeenth 
century, in the guise of this Sussex gentleman, in 
knee-breeches, bagvvig, and buckled shoes, to rap 
his snuff-box, and tell us that all was not color 
of the rose before he became a phantom. A 
grave, good man was Counsellor Burrell of Ocker- 
den House, in far Sussex, a careful master and 
kind, sometimes even recording regret that, having 
taken the sacrament and resolved to live a better 
course of life, he had yet been " too irritable with 
my servants." He gave much in charity ; he 
exercised a paternal care over his many men-ser- 
vants and maid-servants ; he lived in the good old 
times, and kept note-books (with illustrations by 
his own pen) for us to read. Yet October 17, 
1692, this good master is obliged to write : 

" I pay'd Hollybone for setting the old pales by 
the orchard, io</. per rod, which was a little too 
much, for he worked three days, but gently, 4J-." 

Naughty Hollybone, to work but gently for your 
4s. although two centuries nearer the age of inno- 
cence than we are ! 

The next March, the Counsellor continues : 
" Pay'd Frances -Smith her wages and discharged 
her, she being a notorious thief." Fie, Frances 
Smith, whose master paid you 50^-. a year, and an 
extra i8<^. at Christmas, if but you were honest ! 
Alas ! Frances was not the only Sussex servant 
whose fingers were light when William and Mary 
reigned over EngUind in ''good old times." 



36o HIRED FURNISHED. 

April 26, 1698, '' Thomas Goldsmith came as 
footman, at -^os. a year and a livery coat and 
waistcoat once in two years, when he was to have 
a new one ; but being detected in theft, I turned 
him away. After a ramble in London, being 
almost starved, he came again as footman at £dt, 
one livery coat and breeches, in two years ; if he 
went away at the end of the first year, he was to 
leave his livery coat behind him." 

Goldsmith the footman was evidently quite 
worthy to have been born two centuries later, and 
to enter the service of our dames who grumble so 
lustily over the decay of servants. For on the 
14th of September, he again departed, and again, 
*' on the 24th of October, he repented and 
returned half-starved." This time, the uncertain 
footman is supposed to have returned with a wife, 
having rambled away a bachelor, for two pipes, 
instead of one, now adorn the margin. The good 
Counsellor " gave him hopes, if he proved a good 
husband, to consider him further; but he several 
times rambled about all night, was frequently 
drunk with brandy, and spent all the money I got 
for him in half a year's time, besides his wages." 

What became of Thomas the Rambler, we do 
not know ; henceforth he drops out of the story. 
But his good master must have suffered long with 
him, for did he not discharge him at 30^'. and, 
after a drunken "ramble," hire him again for £df, 
as if in desperation at finding no better man? 

Grave Counsellor Burrell in his stately home 
had n© better luck with his coachman. Thomas 
Goldsmith the footman was always symbolized 
upon the margin of notes concerning him by 
a smoking pipe. ''John Coachman" is always 



"s. s:' 361 

symbolized by a tankard. The Counsellor, in Octo- 
ber, 1698, six months after a Goldsmith " ramble/' 
and repentance, writes of John-vvith-a-tankard, 
" Pay'd in full of his half-year's wages, to be spent 
in ale, £2-6-6." At the same time, he " pay'd 
6s. for John's breeches," in full assurance that the 
6s. would also be spent in ale. The next time the 
tankard appears, John has '' kept for ale " the half- 
crown his master gave him to pay for a " goos." 

For some time, the tankard does not again 
appear; but, alas ! John breaks out again. In 
July, 1705, the good old English gentleman whose 
" times " were so much better than ours, " Pay'd 
Gosmark for making cyder id. day whilst John by 
agreement was to be drunk on the carrier's 
money : and I pay'd the glasyer for mending 
John's casement, broken at night by him when he 
was drunk and could not waken the footman to 
let him in." This footman was no other than 
Goldsmith the Rambler. With the two the Coun- 
sellor was so much better off than masters are 
nowadays ! Goldsmith was evidently a superior 
man, for he got drunk on brandy ; poor vulgar 
John, upon ale or cider. 

On the 17th of March, 1706, the master of 
Ockenden Hall writes : " Pd John Coachman, 
that he may be drunk all Easter week." Five 
months later, he pays 14s., for a " periwigg for 
John : and I gave him notice that I would no 
longer allow him for livery, since 't was to be all 
spent in drunkenness." Was it not more than 
Madame Nineteenth Century would do to allow 
John Coachman in December, something '^to 
buy heartsease during the Christmas holidays".? 
Heartsease, too, that imperilled both casements 



3<52 HIRED FURNISHED. 

and heads ! Scant wonder that when in March 
John fell drunk from his box^ his master made 
him pay for his mending out of his own wages. 

But were the Counsellor's troubles confined to 
his coachman and footman? He had as many 
servants as the centurion of old, and this one 
came and this one went, as those other men ; but, 
alas ! not always at their master's will. Indeed, 
the continual change of names and faces at 
Ockenden House in those good old days was 
quite equal to such changes in these fallen times. 

March 25, 1698, there was trouble with Bee 
Jup. Did the master order her forth, or did she 
flaunt and fling at him, " Please, sir, suit yourself 
with another " ? The note-books do not tell us, 
they only say, March 24, 1698, " I pay'd Rebecca 
Jup her wages, ^2-9-0. A bad servant." Then 
he adds in relenting, ''To Bee at parting, u." 
How plainly these simple notes, made only for 
his own eye, and expected to perish before his 
death, reveal the kind heart under the grave face 
and manner ! When, in January, 1699, he dis- 
charged a nurse, he does not put in words her 
delinquency, but indicated it in his usual manner 
by a drinking vessel upon the margin. Perhaps 
it was only a suspicion, and repented of, for the 
cup is covered with lines, as if in second-thought 
attempts to cross it out. 

Did Sarah Creasy take Bee Jup's place in 
Ockenden House ? If so, the Counsellor gained 
naught by the change, for the next April he 
wrote : — 

'' I this day discharged Sarah Creasy from my 
service, having been faulty in taking vessels of strong 
beer out of the brewing and hiding the same." 



''s. s." 363 

Who was to blame, and who profited, that the 
"blew" for the "buckmg" cost is. where for- 
merly the master paid three-ha'pence for it ? The 
" bucking " was the family washing, and derived 
from the Saxon due, our bucket. It occurred only 
two or three times a year, and the Counsellor 
found himself better served to buy his soap and 
" blew " as wanted, and not at wholesale, as he 
preferred. Careful master and housekeeper that 
he was, Counsellor Burrell was evidently as power- 
less to stop leaks as if he had not lived in the 
" good old times." Can we not almost hear his 
sigh adown the long vista of years as he writes : 
" 7th April bought a chees weighing 18 lbs. for 
2 1 the lb. It was all eaten in the kitchen by the 
i8th." 

In those good old days one's troubles some- 
times extended to other people's servants ; and 
the Counsellor hid in Latin the note, " Mr. 
Robrough's maid-servant came and took a cauli- 
flower out of my garden without asking leave or 
saying anything about the matter." 

Thus free in another garden, how much more 
so this maid-servant amid her own master's 
possessions ? 

After all, were those days so much better than 
our own? Or Bee J up than Silly Sussex? 

Only ,once was S. S. known to belie her 
title. That once she vaunted herself, when she 
came to the Villa one Monday morning. 

" Sister 'n' me went to Ninfield yisterdy. It 
just poured-out and we had to move." 

Which in the language of her mistress would be : 

"The rain poured down, and we had to run." 



3^4 HIRED FURNISHED. 



AN ACQUAINTANCE OF MRS. 
CLOVER. 

It is what Carlyle called a " leafy Sussex lane." 
It was a favorite lane with young Arthur Stanley 
when yonder rectory was his temporary home, 
and fame far before him. But a short bird's 
flight away is the cottage in which John Sterling 
lodged during the very brief time that he served 
the Church ; through these hedgerows Frederick 
Denison Maurice often passed, seeing only the 
world within him. 

It is a lane of English poetry and idyls ; with- 
drawn from a quiet highway, and winding through 
cornfields, past a stately mansion with Jacobean 
windows blocked up and Victorian children about 
the door, till it dwindles to a mere track across the 
ancient deer park to the ruined castle. 

Because of its seclusion, it was chosen by one 
easily mistaken for a lady gathering flowers, per- 
haps even for the chatelaine of yonder towers 
gathering simples for the still-room, — one with a 
dignified attitude, figure even stately, the dress 
(twenty yards awiy) entirely ladylike. 

But why that blue vapor rising timidly but an 
inch or two above the grass ? Has a lady of the 
olden times here set up her delicate laboratory 
to distil sweet fragrances and perfumed oils and 



ACQUAINTANCE OF MRS. CLOVER. 3^5 

essences, within touch of the vast and silent one 
of nature herself? 

" I am not a good fire-maker," said a gentle 
voice, a voice that might have given command to 
many men and maidens. 

The speaker wore a hat becoming her age and 
face. A queen of fashion could not have better 
chosen. It was a close, lace-trimmed, black hat, 
precisely such as dowager duchesses wear in their 
gardens, under its drooping brim, snowy hair, 
a refined but weather-beaten face, sound but 
neglected teeth. A faded cloak once elegant, the 
remnants of a cotton frock, and ragged boot-soles 
under more ragged white-cotton stockings had no 
suggestion whatever of the neatness which makes 
poverty respectable. Instead of neatness and 
respectability was an air those decencies rarely 
have, — le gnvid air. 

In the midst of the timid smoke was a biscuit- 
tin, set among smouldering twigs gathered by the 
wayside. " Would you kindly smell of it, madam," 
she mildly said, ''' and tell me how it seems to one 
who fares daintily? I have scraped away all the 
maggots." Had she said "lady," the shibboleth 
of menials, Mrs. Clover would never have seen 
the inside of that biscuit-tin with contents gently 
seething, ornamented with a bit of parsley, and 
sending up no odor so far as she could tell. 

"Thank you," re-covering the tin. " No\v it 
will taste better. A butcher's kind wife gave it 
to me." 

Her glances about her were as timid as her 
timid fire. " I asked a lady outside the lane if 
any trouble could come upon me here, and 
she thought not. I should like a cup of tea," 



3^6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

she said " cup," but meant her rusty cocoa-tin, 
" better than this flesh food, and people will rarely 
refuse us hot water, though they refuse us every- 
thing else." 

That " us " was the first actual clue to her 
condition. 

" I did not sleep well last night. A cup of tea 
cheers without inebriating, after such a night ; " 
adding naively, '' Do you not find it so? " 

Only in answer to questioning, felt under the 
circumstances to be grossly vulgar and impert- 
inent, she told that, although last night's lodgings 
had been satisfactory, the sound of whistling 
outside had several times disturbed her slumbers. 

" Who whistle are honest," said the visitor. 

" Of just such we are, unfortunately, afraid," 
she answered simply. " The single woman 
seemed delicate, so I gave her my corner, away 
from the door ; the married couple took the 
fagot-heap ; so I had Hobson's choice inside the 
empty coal-bin, although I did not know it till I 
found bits in my mouth ; but, as Shakespeare 
says, ' where ignorance is bliss ' t is folly to be 
wise.' " 

" Where are your fellow-lodgers ? Why did 
you not keep with them?" 

" Why should I ? I knew not who and what 
they were. Doubtless they were decent enough ; 
but one must be very careful in making acquaint- 
ance when one takes to the road. The single 
woman was rather clever ; she told me not to 
be afraid of dirty water, for all comes clean when 
it is boiled. But she had biscuits and sugar, and 
the married couple had tea. I had nothing ; so 
I left them all together." 



ACQUAINTANCE OF MRS. CLOVER, 36/ 

The tanned and dirty hands were soft and still 
shapely. " Picking oakum is their severest 
labor," she said. " I avoid the Shelters as much 
as possible on that account ; also because in the 
most of them the officers speak as if you were 
dirt under their feet. The last one I entered, at 
Hastings, is a very ill-bred affair ; so is that at 
Hailsham. I have turned sixty, but I can still walk 
all night rather than bear with rudeness. I am 
getting on to the Hailsham Shelter now, but if 
the sky clears I shall make an effort to pass it ; 
they keep you in until eleven, the best time of 
the day. Hopping begins next week ; I shall 
probably have a pound at the end of it, enough 
to pay my winter's rent. I cannot earn now the 
wages of twenty-five. At twenty-five, I paid 
wages ; at fifty, I was servant in a clergyman's 
family, but I could not get on with his wife ; 
her accent was atrociously vulgar; in Warwick 
we use good English ; so I took out a five-shilling 
license to sell the bit of lace I crochet ; and now 
I have neither license nor lace. 

"Husband? He died of riotous living. Child- 
ren? Both dead, and I have no abiding city, no 
home made with hands." 

Was she going to cant? Did she take the 
Clover for a Bible reader, as van-people usually 
do? 

"Sad, isn't it?" she laughed gleefully, seeing 
the Clover's perplexed face. 

"You don't look your age, dear," when told 
it. " But it 's sheets." Here she drew herself 
up as do tragedy queens. She flourished a rusty 
case-knife and a battered cocoa-tin, not violent- 
ly, but in the grand manner. " Sheets, " she 



368 HIRED FURNISHED. 

crooned, — " sheets, white, clean sheets : under 
them a bed, over them soft, white blankets ! In 
them one may turn as far as one's arms can reach. 
Oh, the blessedness of sheets, sweet- smelling 
sheets, sheets ! Can such things be without our 
special wonder? the Bible says." 

The Lady Tramp then deliberately turned her 
back on the Clover. She had asked for nothing, 
and the other felt dismissed with a whole Longer 
Catechism yet unanswered. 

When Mrs. Clover returned, half an hour later, 
madam had tied her biscuit-tin and contents in 
a grimy cloth to sling upon her arm. She ac- 
cepted a small parcel with a stately bow. *' You 
are not a Christian," she daringly said; "Christ- 
ians don't give away parcels of tea. You are 
better, — you are a lady ! " 

As she placed the parcel in her ragged satchel 
she saw an inquisitive gaze rest upon a few yellow 
rags neatly folded. 

" My clean handkerchiefs," she explained. 



PHCEBUS. 369 



PHCEBUS. 

His Golden Chariot daily wheels with the sun. 
Often it wheels without that luminary, for those 
lanes and highways are frequently arched with 
clouds. That he dismounts from that Chariot at 
every bit of rising ground, and slowly pushes it 
before him, made them call him' nothing else than 
Phoebus. He is bowed and bent, few and sad his 
teeth, his mastiff under jaw fiercely projects ; from 
Monday to Sunday his gaunt cheek is unshorn ; he 
is weather-beaten, wayworn, unlovely. Rarely he 
wears a coat ; and all the long wet English summer 
he brought the Clovers tidings from the uttermost 
parts of the earth in gray shirt-sleeves and dingy 
postman's cap. Many a time and oft he pushed 
the Golden Chariot before him even on level 
ground, while Mrs. Clover walked beside him and 
they communed of things seen and unseen, of 
earth's wonders and heaven's mysteries. Never 
in his long life has Phoebus crossed the borders of 
his native county. Naturally he is sure that no 
other space of earth equals it. He . is very proud 
of those green wealds, of the almost riverless and 
quite hill-less but undulating part of Sussex in 
which they walked, and his heart was won by 
admiration of it. 

" Come into the rector's grounds with me," he 
said ; " there 's a fine prospect Eastbourne way," 

24 



370 HIRED FURNISHED, 

he said " Heastburn ; " " it reminds me of some of 
the poetry I have read." There were other 
" prospects," wider and more varied than " Heast- 
burn- way," even with its tithe barn of thatch, three 
centuries old, its more ancient church, and pic- 
turesque farm and manor houses against a back- 
ground of silver sea ; but it did not take long to 
discover that it was a cherished '' prospect " with 
Phoebus, who never mentioned "views." Why 
it was favorite he never said. One may thus im- 
agine that the distant glimpse of sea was just that 
suggestion of boundlessness, that mystery of the 
infinite, which appeals most powerfully to the de- 
voutly romantic imagination. Back of every mys- 
tery to such lies heaven. Phoebus daily wheels 
his chariot seventeen miles between the rising and 
the setting sun. At three villages, several de- 
tached hamlets, many farm-houses and manors, he 
delivers letters. His own home, a lowly cottage 
adorned with a red letter-box and sign of " Post- 
Office," is in a tiny hamlet eight miles from the 
usual meeting-place of Mrs. Clover and Phoebus. 
It is a high-perched hamlet of thatched or lichen- 
grown roofs and a windmill. All those summer 
days when the clouds hung not too low, the 
Clovers saw that windmill from all their walks. It 
looked a phantom, a white, mysterious vision, 
with filmy arms outstretched in wide benediction. 
It is but a rude windmill such as thousands of 
others in waterless Sussex, grinding the village 
grain with harsh complaining, as wheat has been 
ground here nearly a thousand years. But be- 
tween it and them an Enchantress spread her 
magic veil to make its white silence seem un- 
earthly ; and it is no wonder that Phoebus wheeled 



PHCEBUS. 371 

towards it at every sunset with more solemnity 
than he wheeled away at dawn. Seven of these 
solemn windmills were visible from their village. 
All that summer they mystically allured the Amer- 
icans ; by the end of the summer the insensate 
and insatiate foolishness of longing had robbed 
the region of every mystery — save Phoebus. 

He told of his little garden, his cow, his chariots 
to tinker (he had a mania for buying wrecks, 
and putting them together, till it was reported he 
had half a score of whole ones), and the feet of 
his hamlet to cobble. Where, with all this, could 
more than the labor of living find place? 

Phoebus one day suddenly asked, *' Do you 
ever read?" and Mrs. Clover's breath was almost 
taken away. When she asked in return, '' Do 
you?" his satisfaction was manifest. 

" A bit of an hour of the evening, when I can 
steal one," he said. " When I can't read, I think." 
" Of what ? " the lady longed to ask, but dared 
not. 

" Sweet is solitude," murmured the fierce 
rnastiff-jaw, but whether spontaneously or in quo- 
tation she does not know. Asked where he got 
books, he answered, " Wherever I can. There 's 
a circulating Hbrary in H., but it runs too much to 
novels," here Phoebus looked as if his head might 
be of the roundest, and his name a whole Scrip- 
ture-verse. '' Novels are a sin ; they nauseate the 
spirit ; praise God, I have never read one in my 
life. I read discourses and poetry." 

" Have you never read Pilgrim's Progress?" 

"Once for every year of my life," he answered. 
Evidently he did not suspect that immortal ro- 
mance of anything in common with novels. 



372 HIRED FURNISHED. 

"I read Young's ' Night Thoughts,' " he con- 
tinued, with grotesque smile. " I recommend 
them to you. They throw a wholesome awe over 
the spirit." Phoebus took it for granted that 
" 'olsum hawes " would be grateful to the lady's 
spirit, and she did not say to the contrary. 

He continued, " Then I read a grand poet 
named Tupper. Did you ever hear of Tupper? 
He wrote 'Proverbial Philosophy/ full of noble, 
hinspiring thoughts. Such a man is God's 'ighest 
work. Shall I lend you my Tupper? " 

Mrs. Clover gazed far away over all she could 
see of the great universe that had once held a 
Tupper. Why should she say, even under her 
breath, " Poor Phoebus ! from whom is hidden 
that his Poet of Poets is a babbler of the common- 
place, mouthing sonorous platitudes !" Should she 
not sooner say, " Happy Phoebus ! for, from their 
worshippers, idols ever hide their feet of clay. 
Happy he to whom something, even a Tupper, 
floats above the gross atmosphere of earth ! " Why 
indeed should mere knowledge, earthly and earthy 
knowledge, bruise this devout, this poetic spirit, 
with sneerings? Why tell him that only to the 
poor in spirit is treasure offered by Martin 
Farquhar? Behold, have not the Poor in Spirit a 
promise, from which possibly we "are shut out? 
What right have we, and such as we, to shoot out 
the lip at another to whom even " Proverbial Philo- 
sophy" brings hinspiration, haspiration, and 'igh 
hideas ? 

Upon mountain peaks, in heaven-pointing cathe- 
drals, we, and such as we, continually seek in vain 
that which comes continually to Phoebus in a 
narrow room of a lowly cot, from a Poet who is 



PHCEBUS. 373 

no poet. Who are we, therefore, to say that M. F. 
Tupper, Esq., has not done even Heaven's service 
in many a silent, hidden place, while we, in seats 
of the scornful, have done nothing at all? 

"Sometimes I read Cowper," he continued 
(and did not say " Cooper " ), " I have tried to read 
Carlyle's 'French Revolution,' but the language 
is too hobtuse. I always return with pleasure to 
the Poet Tupper and my Ten Virgins." 

Ten Virgins ! Alas for the wisdom of the wise ! 
Mrs. Clover knew nothing whatever of that lovely 
band, save that by far the most famous and inter- 
esting of them all was " foolish." Phoebus knew 
all about them ; their inmost thoughts, the object 
of their being, even, one must believe, their names. 
Every Day of Rest he lives in their fair company 
with shaven cheeks, clean raiment, and unpost- 
man-capped head, meet for such companionship. 

To think that to mere Clovers they can never 
be anything but a " discourse " ! He promised 
to leave that favorite " discourse " for Mrs. Clover 
some day at the Post-Office, in the door of which 
now stood the postmistress in a blue check apron, 
scowhng at their slowness. 

He did not leave it, nor yet Tupper. Evidently 
his Sundays would be too disconsolate without 
them. 

Phoebus knew the lady to be an American, but 
not her name. He even asked her if she should 
ever go to war again with " South America," and if 
in the Mayflower or Speedwell her " folks *' went 
over. One day he tapped his pedals more vigor- 
ously than usual to overtake her. 

" Something to show you," he said ; " can 
you tell me what language this is?" 



374 HIRED FURNISHED. 

'* It is Italian," she said, but did not add that 
the postcard was addressed to herself. 

'' Why douH those people learn our language?" 
he asked almost impatiently. '' It is much more 
simple and natural than theirs ; and we must all 
understand each other in heaven. But perhaps 
they are Cath'lics." 

Evidently in that case they would never need 
to know our celestial tongue. 

*^ I used to hke my cobbler's trade," Phoebus 
often said ; "as I worked I thought of the time 
when our feet will be holy and our countenances 
shine. I 'm a Methodist." He meant no pun. 
He did not remember that such " holey " feet were 
the cause of his earthly trade. What being a 
Methodist had to do with the rest of his sentence, 
is not plain unless he meant to indicate in which 
denominational quarter of the New Jerusalem he 
should be found. 

Still another day the basket velocipede overtook 
her. He fingered a parcel with disdain, not to 
say disgust. "I forgot to leave this as I came 
through the village," he said; " will you leave it 
at the Post-Office- in passing? " 

It was a novel from the circulating library at 
H. Mrs. Clover did not beheve he forgot it. 



WINDY HOW, 375 



WINDY HOW. 

They met at Euston Station when June was 
young. The hour was that in which churchyards 
yawn and graves give up their dead. She was in 
proper travelHng costume ; he was not. There 
was even an air of disguise in the unseasonable 
overcoat hiding his classic lines. 

" Have you the other clothes ? " he whispered. 

** Hush ! here they are in these shawl-straps. 
Here are the luggage receipt and the tickets ; I 
did not wish you to be seen getting them." 

" I hope we can have a carriage to ourselves/' 
he said ; " I can change in a jiffy." 

" No chance of it," replied the lady. " Every- 
body seems going north to-night." 

Not everybody, but six somebodies who, after 
all, were probably nobodies except to themselves, 
were in their carriage. During three or four 
hours the eight sat bolt upright, lacking opportu- 
nity to do otherwise. Boltly upright they slept 
also, if one might judge from the gaspings and 
growlings of the darkness. Every time the train 
stopped, the Americans hoped somebody would 
get out ; that everybody should leave the carriage 
was too wild a hope to be encouraged. All that 
time the mysterious gentleman in the overcoat 
wrapped the drapery of his disguise about him 
and sat up to as pleasant dreams as were possible 



37^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

to a man fleeing from London in the costume a 
man might wear driven from his club for cheating 
at cards. 

Then day broke upon the sleepy company. It 
broke also upon a significant expanse of white, 
upon which the lady fixed a warning eye. The 
overcoat was hastily drawn over it ; if the others 
saw, they made no sign. Then, one by one, the 
six descended, until at Oxenholme, within a few 
miles of Windermere, where they also were to leave 
the train, they saw their last carriage-companion 
depart. The lady then discreetly gazed from the 
window upon the awakening beauties of the famous 
Lake Country, as the little local train into which 
they had changed ran up beside Lake Windermere. 
She did not need to ask the cause of the myste- 
rious rustle and evident haste behind her, for she 
knew that the Man in the Overcoat was changing 
his clothes. 

"There!" he said, as he came into view in 
proper travelling costume with full evening dress 
over his arm, " it takes an American, does n't it, 
for adapting himself to circumstances ? I wonder 
if an Englishman would think he could see a 
Lyceum ' first-night ' out, and trust to changing 
his clothes on a train." 

From Windermere they drove four or five miles, 
up hill and down, on the Coniston Road, through 
hamlets and villages that seemed not to have 
stepped out from a picture because still in one. 
It was all poetic ground over which they drove ; 
Wordsworth has made almost every rood of it, if 
not immortal, at least immortal for our generations. 
Here upon this shining road he met the old dis- 
missed soldier going home. Here, he roamed and 



WINDY HOW. 377 

loitered when a boy at Hawkshead grammar 
school, the roamings and loiterings used to such 
profitable account in the wearisome " Prelude." 
Others, too, have used Wordsworth's playtime 
here to profit. The amount of Wordsworthiana 
spun out of Wordsworth trivialities must have 
made much money for the compilers, money that 
the parsimonious poet would doubtless much be- 
grudge them, were begrudging possible where he 
has gone. This, however, has nothing to do with 
the pleasantness of the road to Hawkshead, whither 
the Americans were driving. Exactly here is " the 
brook murmuring in the vale," exactly here the 
" long ascent " written of in the " Prelude." Too 
many Wordsworthians have busied themselves 
about the spot for any traveller to mistake it. All 
the same, there are a thousand more ideally pic- 
turesque spots and aspects of the road between 
Windermere and Hawkshead, than those Words- 
worth chose to mention ; and the Americans con- 
sidered that however Wordsworth might make 
over nature into Wordsworthian poetry, he cer- 
tainly did not choose his material from nature's 
richest store. This brook murmuring in the vale 
does not " murmur," at least not from June to 
October of a dry year ; one would not know a 
brook was there had Wordsworth's admirers not 
written about it. 

" Wordsworth did not need to choose the best 
that Nature offered," said curling lips ; '' he quite 
fancied he could gild her primroses by the river's 
brim, and make poetic the asses of tinkers." 

Perhaps it is as well to explain that one of the 
pair had a supreme aversion to Wordsworth the 
man, seeing him as a type of a now almost extinct 



37^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

monster, the anaconda on the domestic hearth, to 
whose deglutition of his womenkind, and battening 
upon their comfort, the New Woman absolutely 
refuses to contribute. 

Half a mile before this Coniston Road reached 
Hawkshead, they dismounted at the hired-furnished 
in which the next four months were to be passed. 
That H. F. was in a lane, a true English lane, 
tangled with ferns and vines. It was a gothic 
lane, vaulted with springing boughs, the grassy 
ground beneath an ever-shifting fretwork. From 
either end, looking into the lane, it seemed as 
if cut through a forest, even though three dwell- 
ings and a Quaker meeting-house met the eye 
with strange surprise. One of these dwellings 
was Windy How, another Windy How Cot. The 
former was an important affair, two stories high, 
well furnished, with flower-garden and orchard, 
and a lawny httle hill of its own, all let for;^2 lOi". 
or ^3 a w^eek. During that summer it had a 
succession of tenants, families hiring it for a 
month or so at a time, according to length of 
vacations. They were oftener Quaker families than 
not, of the north of England. The little meeting- 
house was the centre of a community of Friends, 
who often communicated with distant acquaint- 
ances that Windy How was to let. 

Beside Windy How, Windy How Cot seemed but 
a baby-house. It was originally a laborer's cot, 
built a hundred years and more ago, when labor- 
ers did not demand as much light and air as now. 
It was exquisitely picturesque, gleaming like a 
pearl through masses of vines and vivid splashes 
of floral color. It was built flat against the How, 
or hill, hence had but one door, a low and narrow 



WINDY HOW. 379 

one at that. The door opened directly into the 
chief, indeed the only, lower room, which was at 
different times kitchen, dining-room, or study. A 
commodious scullery, where the oil-stoves were 
kept, relieved this room of the roughest work, 
although the modern range, set deep into the 
antique fireplace, was almost its chief feature, ex- 
cept when a handsome screen of golden storks 
and foliage upon a black ground was drawn before 
that range. Above, under a slanting, but not too 
low roof were two comfortable chambers with 
windows of pocket-handkerchief size, set with in- 
finitesimal panes. The two houses were let by 
an ex-school teacher who had invested her money 
in them, and had furnished them in most excellent 
taste, as well as with every necessary convenience. 
The Cot she had furnished with an eye to women- 
artists, who every summer haunt this fair region. 
A party of four at least could comfortably share 
its accommodations, that is, in a dry season, when 
the day is chiefly spent out of doors ; and for such 
parties, fresh from London studios and art galleries, 
she had bought pretty china, a handsome art- 
square for the sitting-room, and had set blooming 
flower-boxes outside the windows. To be sure 
Windy How Cot was as dark as a pocket when the 
front door was shut ; but then it almost never was 
shut until the autumn rains came, which was 
another story. During all that long bright dry 
summer, so unusual in that rainy Lake Country, 
the Cot was as dark as a pocket to be sure, but a 
pocket with a good many slits in it. Through 
one great rent which answered for a front door, 
the sunshine broadly came for three long months, 
illuminating every corner, gilding and glorifying 



380 HIRED FURNISHED. 

even the objectionable necessity of clearing the 
study table and tumbling French romanticists and 
German classics cheek by jowl upon the already 
piled window recess, at every mealtime. 

*' Imagine it," said the lady, " lace curtains, 
triple-plated spoons and forks, nice knives, an 
abundance of pots and pans, even towels, sheets, 
and pillow-cases included, for two guineas a 
month! I can't see where Miss Newlyn makes 
her profit, unless she got the Cot for nothing." 

" Very likely it was thrown in with Windy How 
House," suggested her mate. Whereupon the first 
speaker clouded a bit, not exactly pleased with the 
thought of such delight as theirs with a merely 
" thrown-in." 

Stately Mrs. B. from the third house in the lane 
greeted them with dignity, fresh butter, cream, 
new-laid eggs, and lily-white bread and a glorious 
handful of flowers from her own garden. Mrs. B. 
would help them through the summer with many 
a kindly service, with the very snowiest linen they 
ever saw in their lives, with many a sage sugges- 
tion and bit of wise advice. She was the care- 
taker of the House and Cot and evidently included 
the occupants in her careful and pleasant super- 
vision, when she liked them. In contrary case, 
she turned upon those unliked ones the very 
coldest of countenances, and was as enigmatical 
as a sphinx concerning the best butter and the 
price of fresh raspberries. Once even the Cotters, 
upon whom she looked kindly from the first, per- 
haps in gentle commiseration for occupants of a 
mere " thrown-in," nearly forfeited her good opin- 
ion. It was when Mrs. Cotter borrowed bread for 
dinner. Mrs. B. was one of those perfectly regu- 



WINDY HOW. 381 

lated housekeepers to whom a house without 
bread was as foolish as a church without a Bible, 
or a Christian without a creed. Her own house 
was as dark as those North country farm-houses 
oftenest are, with low walls and small deep-set 
windows ; yet sheet-lightning or a conflagration 
could not bring to light a spot, or stain, or dust- 
mote in it. She never seemed at work, moving 
with apparently slow stateliness about her affairs ; 
yet she accomphshed wonders. She was like a 
queen in exile, having been a serving-maid. 
Doubtless she excused the Cotters upon reflection, 
as she could never have excused the people of the 
House, cot-keeping being not exactly housekeep- 
ing, even with the nicest of beds and bedding, the 
most artistic of art-squares and screens. She 
must even have a different set of rules for nomads 
who hired-furnished for four long months at a 
time. 

" Plenty of people are richer," they heard of 
her saying ; " but not many are nicer than this 
summer's Cotters, even if Mrs. Cotter does dig 
potatoes." 

Which leads to say, that there was a bit of 
garden to the Cot with a thicket of gooseberry 
bushes and a space planted with potatoes. While 
the gooseberry season lasted, Mrs. B.'s perfect 
gooseberry pies and puddings were no rarity on 
the Cotters' table, and many an after-luncheon 
and after-dinner hour the Cotters spent in the 
ripened thicket upon the golden slope of Windy 
How, whose whispering summit looked down into 
their humble chimney. There, too, almost every 
day when the sun sank in the west, and the 
Cotters were not abroad upon their frequent, 



382 HIRED FURNISHED. 

often protracted, always poetic pilgrimages, for a 
little moment might have been seen a strangely 
gyrating figure against the golden sky. For an 
instant or two it bent profoundly low, as if in 
earnest entreaty of the mysteriously fecund earth, 
then sprang erect with even a suggestion of Pan- 
like dancing in the folds and curves of fichu and 
tea-gown. To the unimaginative eye this was 
merely Mrs. Cotter digging four potatoes for 
dinner. 

" Digging," indeed ! 

Was it '' digging " to summon forth with en- 
chanter's wand (double pronged and wooden- 
handled) those golden spheres, fragrant of the 
loamy crucible in which the richness of innumerable 
bygone summers are daily distilled? "Digging 
potatoes " indeed, that gladsome, graceful, health- 
ful, happy, that ladylike and most aesthetic magic, 
which makes golden moons to dawn, and little 
stars to gleam, upon the pungent darkness ? " Dig- 
ging potatoes ! " Out upon you, base realist, and 
find your chief interest in the fact that the Cotters 
did not buy a potato that summer, though bushels 
of them, with everything else in the line of " garden 
sass " was daily brought to their door ; likewise 
flesh and fowl, eke fish from the lakes and from 
the sea ; likewise milk and cream twice a day 
from a neighboring farm, freshly churned butter, 
berries, and eggs over which the hens had not yet 
ceased cut-cut-cut-ker-dar-cutting. 

Mrs. Cotter was well aware that she seemed to 
be digging potatoes on that picturesque garden 
slope, up so many mossy steps from the lane, and 
level with the Cot's eaves. She well knew that 
curious eyes watched her at times from the hamlet 



WINDY HOW. 383 

doctor's house (or rather the doctor's rich wife's) 
just outside the lane in the road. She knew that 
through lace curtains eyes sometimes gazed at her 
to set up many proud peacocks in tails, and that 
various bucolic minds wondered how a potato- 
digger could so well imitate a lady's appearance. 
That they were known to be Americans, probably 
accounted for much that was peculiar in this 
vagrant pair, but even that could not account for 
the potato-digging by the woman (or lady) just 
back on foot from a week's excursion, while the 
man (or gentleman) hid himself inside the Cot. 
The eyes little supposed that whenever that man 
(or gentleman) expostulated with the lady (or 
woman), as she sallied forth with pitchfork and 
' basket, like a maid in a pastoral, her reply invari- 
ably was, like a Miss Ferrier heroine, " Kill me, 
oh, kill me ; but do not ask me to abstain from 
mining my daily gold ! " 

Mr. Cotter preferred his luncheon to his other 
meals ; for Mrs. Cotter, breakfast was the favorite 
repast ; as to dinner, especially after a long tramp, 
they both were agreed that it was a very poor meal 
to do without. Hence, the three meals must be 
properly provided for, beginning with the exquisite 
booterboons, without which breakfast was but an 
empty show, at least to the lady. The booterboons 
came from Hawkshead, and a tiny dark shoplet 
kept by two little white-haired old maidlets. Rather 
should it be said that one of the sisters kept the shop- 
let, the other baked the booterboons. The sisters 
were not regular bakers or professionals, being 
simply ancient maidens with a knack at making 
three or four usually home-made things, and adding 
these three or four to the scanty stock of pepper- 



384 HIRED FURNISHED. 

mints, toffy, candles, snuff, and tea, which was all 
their other stock in trade. Every afternoon at 
four, booterboons, whigs, and tea-cakes came from 
the little brick oven back of the shoplet, — that 
shoplet so obscurely placed amid other dark-browed 
houses, so microscopically windowed, so sullenly 
indifferent to the public eye, that Mrs. Cotter spent 
many an hour that summer in exasperated search for 
it, knowing exactly where it was the day before, ex- 
actly where it would be to-morrow, exactly where 
it should be now, yet looking for it exactly where 
it never was since time began. And each time 
she returned airily to Windy How as innocently 
smiling as if not desperately afraid her tyrant 
would find her out and inquire, with aggravating 
sweetness, "Been trying to square the circle 
again? " 

Once or twice a week from the shoplet's oven- 
let came also the famous Hawkshead cakes which 
every North countryman remembers with longing 
wherever he may be, as the New Englander re- 
members his mother's flapjacks. The daily summer 
excursion-breaks, driving between Windermere or 
Ambleside and Coniston, always stop at Hawkshead 
for the celebrated cakes ; and all that summer, tour- 
ists and travellers walked about or drove with the 
renowned disks in their hands or under their arms. 
It was a necessary part of every excursion to 
make, or renew, acquaintance with this delectable 
dainty ; with the Cotters it was enough once to 
make, they never sought to renew. 

Hawkshead cake is two layers of the very rich- 
est pastry, rich enough to fur the tongue, turn the 
whites of the eyes yellow, and the complexion 
green upon sight. Between these layers of bilious- 



WINDY HOW. 385 

ness is a layer of lively headache. The Cotters 
never learned of what that layer is composed. They 
saw it black ; they tasted it sickeningly sweet ; they 
knew that many Zante currants went to the mix- 
ture; they never knew more, not even why it 
was called Cake when it was palpably of the genus 
Pie. 

But those booterboons ! 

What mortal pen can describe their snowdrift 
whiteness, their delicacy, their crisp tenderness, 
the exquisite suavity with which they lie upon the 
tongue, the subtle smoothness as of vanishing 
cream with which they melt from it? 

Every morning when the sun came topsy-tur- 
vying into the Cot with the opening door, and 
capered like a schoolboy all over the place, booter- 
boons of the evening before went into the oil-stove 
oven on the scullery table. They went in cold, 
pale, semi-lifeless, flat, and of tea-saucer size. In 
a few minutes they came out again buoyant, joy- 
ous, golden-tender, with radiant souls eager to 
meet their fate, which was to be eaten with 
supreme satisfaction and fresh butter by the two 
Cotters. 

"Lily-white muffins," Mr. Cotter undertook to 
call them, but was instantly crushed. 

Once upon a time Hartley Coleridge promised 
to give a lecture on Wordsworth in some church 
or chapel of this region. Nobody was quite cer- 
tain that he would do it, if left to his own devices, 
so two villagers went over to Nab Cottage to bring 
him to his appointment. The place was full, for 
the villagers had learned that Wordsworth was 
much talked about; and they knew so little about 
him themselves, although perfectly familiar with his 

25 



386 HIRED FURNISHED. 

awkward appearance and solemnly didactic manner. 
Hartley stood before his audience, opened his 
mouth and cried shrilly. 

" Lily-white muffins ! Lily-white muffins ! " 

Only this and nothing more could he be induced 
to say. 

" Of course it was in our present village," 
agreed the two, " and he meant our booterboons." 

" ' Booterboons ' ! " said Mrs. Cotter. '' Let 
them ever remain in our memories by that blessed 
name. As butter-buns they could never be half 
so sweet." 

For luncheon came frequently another kind of 
cake favorite with Mr. Cotter, and for these some- 
thing must be brought in a lump from Hawkshead. 
For a long time the Cotters thought this something 
was "balm," and wondered if its pecuhar smell 
had ever suggested an ancient and decayed Gilead. 
It was sold from an enormous lump always stand- 
ing, daily changed, upon the counter of the 
Hawkshead general store. The young clerk did 
not understand Mrs. Cotter the day she asked for 
yeast, he knew it only as " barm;" and although 
he did not know the word came from the Anglo- 
Saxon beorm, was doubtless well aware that it 
answered to the leaven of his Sunday-school 
lessons. 

" Whigs " are a species of plainer booterboons, 
specked with caraway seeds of which rustic Eng- 
land and plebeian London is so inordinately fond, 
of which England was unanimously fond when the 
ladies of castles and manors consulted receipt- 
books in the gloomy Black Letter, which to the 
nineteenth century makes an innocent damson tart 
seem a dreadfully occult dose. Nowadays cara- 



WINDY HOW. 387 

way seeds make not a patrician sensation upon the 
tongue. How can they, having, with weak tea, 
built so many dissenting cliapels, breeched so 
many unlucky savages, and become recognized as 
distinctly of the world of Miss Squeers and the 
Uriah Heaps. Monsieur Mirobolant never im- 
agined anything so Squeery and Heapy in his 
culinary wooing of the author of " Mes LarmesP 
The Cotters could not explain why this Squeery 
taste did not go over in the Mayflower, that cargo 
of dissent ; they could only rejoice that it did 
not. 

" Whigs " are invariably named " Wigs " by 
London and South country tourists, who always 
seem beset with dread lest the letter h trip them 
unawares. This dread makes Mayfair pronounce 
the English language not one whit (or wif) better 
than Whitechapel. The former avoids the h as a 
pestilence, because the latter brings it so much in 
evidence. As the latter learns at board-schools to 
pronounce the final ng^, the former takes to goiti^ 
and comhi' , to eatin\ and drinkin', lest it be con- 
sidered of the same race. 

" Suppose the Carpenter's Son had spoken 
EngHsh," remarked the younger Cotter, " how 
would he have used his /z's and his ng's ? " 

" Ask me another," replied the elder Cotter. 

"Windy How seems four miles from every- 
where," one of the pair remarked. " It is four 
miles from here to Windermere ; four miles 
through the fields to Ambleside ; four miles down 
hill to Coniston, although thirty-two miles back. 
Then from Ambleside, Grasmere is four miles, al- 
though we know short-cuts that reduce the whole 



388 HIRED FURNISHED. 

distance from Windy How to Grasmere to but 
litde more than six miles." 

All summer long the two patronized these short 
cuts, and sauntered many a delicious mile through 
billowy pastures and farm lanes, over deep dank 
ditches spanned by tottering planks, up sunny 
knolls and down their sunny sides, through ex- 
panses of waving grain, through fields of cabbage, 
purple as pansies, stepping from stone to stone of 
bubbhng brooks, passing even through the house- 
yards of silent farms far away from the almost 
equally quiet highway through which rustic carts 
crept and giddy bicycles dashed as if half afraid to 
make a noise. All summer they walked till fair 
Grasmere, gay Ambleside, brisk Windermere, and 
Bowness, became as familiar to them as even little 
Hawkshead, the metropolis of Windy How. Often 
they went farther to Keswick, and memories of 
Southey, to the Falls of Lodore and gloomy Butter- 
mere, where lived famous Mary of the Inn, to 
Ullswater and all that lies between, delighting to 
consider themselves " literary tramps." 

The Literary Tramp is no new thing. Thousands 
of years ago a blind one sang of the beauty of 
Helen and the valor of Achilles. Nearer our own 
days, palmers with scrip and scallop-shell told tales 
for bread as they tramped on towards the Holy 
Land or home from it. Troubadours sang as they 
strolled from castle to castle and became the 
Fathers of Literature. Then literature ceased to go 
on foot. When it could not ride as Chaucer did, 
it stayed at home. Bad roads, sparse habitations, 
above all the growth of cities, did away with literary 
vagabondage. Literature almost forgot nature in 
time, and the tramp took to garrets rather than to 



WINDY HOW. 389 

highways, and wrote idyls in bed to keep warm. 
Only within the last hundred years has litera- 
ture again found feet, and the pleasant spectacle of 
its makers tramping alone, or in couples, again be- 
come prominent. 

Almost the first of literary tramps, if indeed they 
come within the description at all, were Shelley and 
Mary Godwin. They have left little trace of their 
adventures ; yet that they could walk, or thought 
they could, is evident in their plan to go on foot 
from Paris to Lausanne. We catch a fleeting 
glimpse of them trudging with Jane Clairmont 
through the dust, and grumbling bitterly at the evil 
fare and housing of vagabondage, the two women 
riding by turns on their own donkey, till a sprained 
ankle promoted Shelley himself to ride, and they 
had to buy a chariot. The poorest of tramps they 
must have been, for not love of nature but scarcity 
of gold put them on their feet. What the natives 
of the country thought of them, no man may say, for 
the girls trudged in black-silk gowns, and were of the 
hated nation. Doubtless they trudged along in 
the kid slippers and silk stockings and the corded 
and iron-busked stays that were of that day. No 
wonder the poet got a sprain. 

A stouter, if less romantic pair of pedestrians 
were James and Harriet Martineau, who, in 1822, 
made a tour on foot together in Scotland, walking 
five hundred miles in a month. Miss Martineau 
was always a capital walker, while she had health ; 
and Wordsworth accused her of walking the legs 
off of half the gentlemen of iVmbleside, For all 
that, she was the most unimaginative of women. 
She had a manly stride, and never nymph or pixy, 
elf or dryad lured her to follow streams or to 
dream beneath rustling foliage. 



390 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Robert Browning and Sarianna were another 
brother and sister who covered miles upon miles 
together. The peculiarity of their journeys lies in 
the fact that they did not begin them till both 
were middle-aged. They formed their compan- 
ionship after Mrs. Browning's death, with whose 
feeble steps neither of them had ever kept pace. 
Browning speaks of seventeen-mile walks with Sari- 
anna, and records nine miles accomplished in less 
than two hours, which certanly required more than 
the usual manly stride from his companion. 

The Words worthS; brother and sister, were 
splendid examples of literary tramping. Mrs. 
Wordsworth told Harriet Marti neau that William 
and Dorothy sometimes walked forty miles a day. 
Tours on foot were a large part of their experience 
together. The first thing they did after their re- 
union in 1794 was to start off upon a little stroll of 
which Dorothy wrote : '' I walked with my brother 
from Kendal to Grasmere, eighteen miles, and after- 
wards to Keswick, fifteen miles, through the most 
delightful country that ever was seen." In Novem- 
ber, 1797, they started upon a pedestrian tour, 
with Coleridge, along the sea-coast. A little later 
in the same month, the three set out at half-past 
four of a dark and cloudy afternoon, walking eight 
miles for a start, while the two poets laid the 
plan of a ballad, with the sale of which they 
hoped to pay the expenses of the excursion. 
The methods of the two did not run easily to- 
gether, and ''The Ancient Mariner" was soon 
given over entirely to Coleridge. 

Dorothy did not walk in a black-silk gown. 
Doubts are reasonable if even she had one. Her 
usual walking costume was a little jacket and 



WINDY HOW. 391 

brown dress. Coleridge we may imagine in the 
same raiment in which he afterwards travelled with 
the two in Scotland, the soiled nankeen trousers, the 
blue coat with brass buttons, in which he mounted 
a Unitarian pulpit and preached a candidate ser- 
mon. Wordsworth, doubtless, also wore his usual 
suit of dingy brown, with a flapping broad-brimmed 
straw hat to protect his weak eyes. They were 
not three graces, this distinguished trio of tramps ; 
Wordsworth was not a handsome man, not even 
an impressive man. In spite of the fact that the 
brother and sister walked, according to De Quin- 
cey's calculation, between one hundred and seventy 
and one hundred and eighty thousand miles, his 
legs were the worse part of him, and the total effect 
of his narrow person was even more uncomely in 
movement than in repose. His walk was a roll 
and a lunge, with eyes fixed on the ground, — mum- 
bly on his legs, the neighbors described him. 
Once Dorothy, walking farther behind him than 
usual, and thus getting a better view, was heard to 
exclaim discontentedly several times, '' Can that 
be William ? " Dorothy herself was short and slight, 
with such a gypsy tan as is rarely seen upon an 
English face. Her eyes were not soft, nor were 
they fierce or bold ; but they were wild and start- 
ling, and hurried in their motion like those of 
some wild wood-creation. This same glancing 
quickness, according to De Quincey, characterized 
all her motions, although, like her brother, she 
stooped awkwardly in walking. Humming and 
booing about, the peasants saw the poet -and his 
sister, of whom he wrote : — 

" She gave me ears, she gave me eyes." 



392 HIRED FURNISHED. 

" Miss Dorothy kept close behind him," a neigh- 
bor said, "and she picked up the bits as he let 
'em fall, and took 'em down, and put 'em together 
on paper for him. And you may be very well 
sure as how she did n't understand nor make sense 
out of 'em, and I doubt that he didn't know 
much more about 'em either himself; but, how- 
ever, there 's a good many folks as do, I dare say." 

Wordsworth sometimes had another foot-mate. 
Once he found Christopher North directing some 
road-building near Elleray Wilson's own cottage. 
Christopher was in slippers, but, joining Words- 
worth, walked miles with him till, not only the 
slippers were worn entirely away, but socks as 
well. 

Wordsworth wrote of his own zest for walking : 
" My lamented friend Southey would have been a 
Benedictine monk in a convent with an inex- 
haustible library. Books were his passion, wan- 
dering was mine. Had I been born in a class 
deprived of liberal education, it is not unlikely 
that, strong in body, I should have taken to a way 
of life such as that in which my Wanderer passed 
the greater part of his days." At seventy-one, 
Wordsworth wrote of being four hours on foot, 
even though he confessed, at fifty-nine, that he 
was unable to take so much out of his body by 
walking as formerly. Yet, at sixty-one, he ran 
twenty miles a day beside the carriage in which 
his daughter Dora drove. Poor Dorothy gave in 
sooner. The twilight of her reason settled upon 
her and confined her to her own home for more 
than twenty years, till her death in 1855. 

Another brother and sister were good foot- 
mates, although no great lovers of nature. They 



WINDY HOW. 393 

prattled of pleasant walks, but never of ardent 
mountain climbs and plunges into wild abysses. 
Mary Lamb wrote, after a visit to Brighton in 
1 817, to Dorothy Wordsworth (she being fifty-five 
and Dorothy nine or ten years younger). " Charles 
and I played truant, and wandered among the 
hills, which we magnified into little mountains 
and almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. 
Certainly we made discoveries of many pleasant 
walks which few of the Brighton visitors ever 
dreamed of; for, like as is the case in London, 
after the first two or three miles we were sure 
to find ourselves in a perfect solitude. I hope 
we shall meet before the walking faculties of 
either of us fail. You say you can walk fifteen 
miles with ease ; that is exactly my stint, and more 
fatigues me." 

Smooth roads and easy footfalls were evidently 
the ideal of pleasant walks to the Lambs, to whom 
the Brighton downs were as good as Westmore- 
land mountains. It almost seems that they walked 
chiefly -to rid themselves of n-ervous irritability. 
There is nothing to indicate love of nature in 
Mary Lamb's writing, and Charles openly declared 
himself a stranger to the shapes and textures of 
the commonest trees, herbs, flowers. " Not from 
the circumstance of my being town-born, for I 
should have brought the same unobservant spirit 
into the world with me had I seen it first on 
Devon's leafy shores." Nor did he care for the 
sea. ''I cannot stand all day," he wrote, "on 
the naked beach, watching the capricious hues 
of the sea shifting like the hues of a dying mullet. 
When I gaze on the sea, I want to be on it, 
over it, across it. It binds me with chains as with 



394 HIRED FURNISHED. 

iron. The salt sea foam seems to nourish a 
spleen. I am not half so good-natured by the 
sea as by the milder waters of my native river." 
He cared no more for mountains. Rather would 
he be shirtless and bootless in London, than amid 
such summits and mists as Ossian sang. The 
scenery of the Salutation Inn was more to his 
taste. He did not hunger for the horizon. The 
mystery and enchantment of distance never lured 
him over moor and mountain, brake and fell. He 
liked near things, neighborly smiling open-hearted 
objects, books, tankards, pipes, cards, snuff-boxes, 
smiles, chatter. Still he liked to walk. Doubt- 
less, like Leigh Hunt, he felt a respect for his 
leg every time he lifted it up. He could not sit 
and think, he said (which suggests nervous irrita- 
bility), so when he was not reading he was walk- 
ing. Afterwards, as the Superannuated Man, he 
looks back half wistfully upon the ancient bondage 
which made hohdays so fair and precious, and 
laments that now is no need to walk thirty miles 
a day to make the most of those transient de- 
lights. Then what a cockney's-out-upon-a-holi- 
day is the retrospect in " Old China " of pleasant 
walks, lunch-baskets, ale, table-cloths, landladies. 
Their walks leave them only such memories as 
may be acquired within sound of Bow Bells. 

The best foot-mates, far and away, of our century 
were William and Mary Howitt. They began to 
walk on their wedding-day, two prim young Quak- 
ers honeymooning among hedgerows, like the rus- 
tic oiivriers of France, and they continued to walk 
vigorously together during the space of almost two 
generations of men. A year later, they walked 
five hundred miles among the Scotch mountains, 



WINDY HOW. 395 

carrying light luggage on their backs, and resting 
at rough inns or rougher cots. They chmbed 
Ben Lomond, wading streams, crawling over bogs, 
and finally grappling hand and foot with a terrible 
cone, from the peak of which they gazed upon a 
prospect to fill the eye of the gods. It was a 
wild tramp taken in 1S24, and was surely a return 
of primeval instincts under the quaint serenity of 
the Quaker guise. 

Walking was not fashionable then. Respecta- 
bility went in gigs, and he who walked, particularly 
she, was, in popular esteem, a vagrant. To see a 
fair English girl springing across torrents on step- 
ping stones, or carried on a brawny Highlander's 
back, scrambling through bracken like some wood- 
land creature, and sliding down sheer defiles, was 
enough to make the peasants fancy the two stark 
mad. They heard among the mountains of an- 
other crazy pair who had lately passed that way. 
These were Christopher North, the leaping, wrest- 
ling, cock-fighting Professor of Moral Philosophy 
at Edinburgh, and his young wife, he carrying 
about a quarter of a hundred weight of provisions 
on his back, she about fourteen pounds. 

The Howitts loved nature, but not as poets and 
artists do, those pagans of our world. They loved 
it in the sober, old-fashioned way of the intelligent 
and cultivated multitude, with no illumination as to 
moods, intense or occult, transfiguring the land- 
scape. Trees were trees to them, not sentient 
rapture and agonies, mountains were mountains, 
rivers were rivers, just as they were to Gains- 
borough and Lawrence. The actual nature and 
its wholesome physical influence upon themselves, 
in mind and body, were enough for the active, 



39^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

objective pair whose own natures had no myste- 
ries, no subtleties to be mirrored in a landscape. 

During all their long married life, these devoted 
companions never missed an opportunity for a 
protracted excursion, and in their daily rambles 
they walked miles enough to go round the world. 
In the fifty-first year of their marriage, they might 
reasonably be considered old people, Mrs. Hovvitt 
seventy-four, her husband eighty. At such ages 
the most faithful and sympathetic, as well as the 
most active companionship, has usually become a 
fireside one, and memory, not legs, the enduring 
bond. Yet here is this mighty couple, stronger, 
more enduring than any running youth and maid 
of classic story, starting forth one August morning 
to climb an Alp of the Tyrol. To be sure they 
do not now carry their personal belongings and pro- 
visions, but hire a man for the work. Seventy-four 
and Eighty started from the village of Taufers up 
a steep and ever-mounting road, too steep for 
vehicles. They walked five hours, till they were 
getting weary. It began to rain ; but these daunt- 
less youths walked on and on in narrow paths, 
through grassy fields full of flowers. At dusk 
they came to the chalet of a tenant farmer. The 
wife was baking cakes for supper, the husband and 
his men eating them. The apparition of the out- 
landish couple, so high above the earth, a height 
where old age is almost absolutely unknown, 
created as much astonishment as a comet would 
have done. But they were made welcome, and 
cordially entertained to supper. Where did they 
sleep? In the barn, to be sure, on fresh, sweet 
hay, the bed most affected by youthful vagabonds. 
Seventy-four and Eighty slept two nights on the 



WINDY BOW. 397 

hay, climbing twice to the mountain-top between 
times, with strong longing to reach distant glaciers, 
but finding daylight too short. On the second 
morning when Seventy-four woke, Eighty had 
already left his hay for a morning stroll. He 
returned to breakfast, jauntily sporting his hat 
trimmed with flowers in Tyrolean fashion. 

The open-air feeling of space, atmosphere, large- 
ness, freshness, and beauty pervades the Auto- 
biography. The excursion planned for dear old 
father's eighty-fifth birthday was abandoned only 
because of the rain. They climbed Monte Cavo 
together, and they wandered, like youths in an 
idyl, over the Campagna, gathering flowers. In 
the eighty- seventh year that William saw, when 
Mary had seen fourscore- and-one, she wrote : 
" Father and 1 have just come in from a pleasant 
walk right into the country, amongst picturesque 
houses and such ancient orchards and park-like 
fields scattered over with grand old Spanish 
chestnuts," 

Mr. Howitt died in 1879, aged eighty-nine 
years. No more the faithful foot-mates of sixty 
wedded years trudge side by side. But not yet 
does the widowed one sit down quietly at home, 
and know the pomps and glories of this radi- 
ant world no more. She writes that she takes 
quiet little strolls, and gathers the flowers her hus- 
band loved. She lives to see eighty-nine years, 
then gently falls asleep, at exactly the age her 
husband ceased to walk. 

One fine summer evening of 1824, the inhabi- 
tants of a primitive northern village saw two trav- 
ellers, apparently man and wife, come into the 
village, dressed like tinkers or gypsies. The man 



398 HIRED FURNISHED. 

was tall, broad-shouldered, and of stalwart build, 
his fair hair floated, redundant, over neck and shoul- 
ders, his red whiskers were of portentous size. He 
bore himself with the air of a strong man rejoicing 
in his strength. On his back was a capacious knap- 
sack, and his slouched hat, garnished with fishing- 
hooks and tackle, showed he was as much addicted 
to fishing as to making spoons. The appearance 
of his companion contrasted strikingly with that 
of her spouse. She was of slim and fragile form, 
and more like a lady in her walk and bearing 
than any tinker's wife that had ever been seen in 
those parts. The natives were somewhat surprised 
to see this great fellow making for the best inn, 
the Gordon Arms, where the singular pair actually 
took up their quarters for several days. They 
were in the habit of sallying forth, each armed 
with a fishing-rod, — a circumstance the novelty of 
which, as regards the tinker's wife, excited no small 
curiosity ; and many conjectures were hazarded as 
to the real character of the mysterious couple. 
So wrote one who saw burly Christopher North and 
his wife on the vagabondage which Mary Howitt 
described as, " A species of bee and butterfly 
flight, sipping pungent juice and alighting upon 
bloom;" for whenever they found a particularly 
romantic spot, or an attractive cottage, there they 
stopped for days, while the husband fished, the 
wife rested, and both explored the region round 
about. 

One morning in Glenorchy, Wilson started out 
early to fish in Loch Toila. Its nearest point was 
thirteen miles from his lodging. On reaching it, 
and unscrewing the butt-end of his fishing-rod 
to get the top, he found he had forgotten it. 



WINDY HOW. 399 

Nothing daunted, he walked back, breakfasted, made 
his rod complete, and walked again to Loch Toila. 
All the long summer day he fished round the loch, 
and after sunset, started for home with a full bas- 
ket. Feeling somewhat fatigued, and passing a 
familiar farm-house, he stopped to ask for food. 
It was near midnight, and he routed the family 
from bed. The mistress brought him a full bottle 
of whiskey, and a can of milk. He poured half 
the whiskey into half the milk, and drank it off at 
a draught. While his hostess was still staring in 
amazement, he poured the remaining milk and 
whiskey together, and finished the mixture. He 
then proceeded homeward, having performed a 
journey of not less than seventy miles. 

Between the 5th of July and the 26th of August, 
this couple walked three hundred and fifty miles 
in the Highlands, fishing, eating, and staring. 
Professor Wilson wrote, '' Unlike bee and butterfly, 
he carried death and devastion everywhere." One 
almost shudders to read how much of harmless 
happy life went out forever to make a giant's holiday. 
He killed one hundred and seventy dozen of trout, — 
one day, nineteen dozen and a half, another, seven 
dozen. From Loch Awe, in three days, he took 
seventy-six pounds of fish, all with the fly. He 
shot two roebucks, and he wrote, " I nearly caught 
a red deer by the tail ; I was within half a mile 
of it, at farthest." 

On their return, the pair, particularly the lady, 
were the lions of Edinburgh. So far from pre- 
senting the weatherbeaten appearance expected, 
Mrs. Wilson was declared to be bonnier than ever. 
It is a little curious that this lady, who walked on 
one day of this tramp twenty-five miles, should 



400 HIRED FURNISHED. 

have died prematurely some years afterwards, be- 
cause of insufficient bodily exercise. 

Various good walkers have died, and left no lit- 
erary trace of their ramblings. Mr. and Mrs. S. C. 
Hall were of these who covered untold miles to- 
gether and made no note of them. Others do 
not come within the scope of this paper, for the 
reason that they walked not in pairs, but alone. 
Mary Russell Mitford declared herself perfectly 
uncomfortable without a daily walk of ten miles, 
and congratulated herself that a friend, come to 
dwell nine miles away from her, was within caUing 
and walking distance There is a funny descrip- 
tion of this spinster taking long solitary walks at 
night with a lantern. This would seem to argue 
no love of nature as incentive to tramping. The 
dainty Pre-Raphaelitism of the natural descrip- 
tions in her books, however, shows that she loved 
it in her own prim small way. 

The Bronte sisters appear to have been almost 
always walking, one or the other of them coming 
into every picture of that dreary Yorkshire parson- 
age, as fresh from the breezy moors. But they 
walked little in pairs, and carried their passionate 
hearts and fettered longings out under the gray 
skies in solitude. 

Of our own day, George Eliot and Mr. Lewes, 
miserable invalids though they were, made no 
mean showing as foot-people. George Eliot's 
letters and diaries show that scarcely a day was 
without its walk. One day the pair, in company 
with Mr. Herbert Spencer, are five hours on foot. 
But no gypsy tramps and romantic adventures were 
in that united history. Their walks too were 
never counted by miles, but by the time spent on 



WINDY HOW. 401 

them out of doors. Those slow walks were as 
eminently respectable as the pursuit of queer 
insects and strange fish and fleeing health could 
possibly be, as decorous as George EHot's own 
highly moral and self-conscious letters. There 
were no wanderings. Never was there a saunter, 
delicious relic of fair, ancient beggary when sans- 
terres lived more gayly than lords of broad 
domains. They took constitutionals, and for the 
stomach's sake, not the imagination's. George 
Eliot's was the shut-in view of one born in a 
flat country, — mere peeps at hedgerows, orchards, 
meadows, gardens, commons. She sees color 
strongly, but not tender or subtle color, always the 
bright yellow of the broom, the vivid green of the 
grass, the red and gray of rocks, the gold of sandy 
beaches, the smart hues of flowers. The wide sky, 
to be sure, comes continually into her glimpses and 
her letters ; but never the beckoning horizon, never 
the beguiling distance, only and always the well 
behaved blue directly over her head. She hated 
the wind, and incessantly complained of it; but 
breezes were sweet and sunshine necessary to her. 
She rarely, if ever, sees the radiance and grandeur 
of earth from a height, or in limitless expanses. 
Neither was she in love with the sea, in her mild 
admiration of it standing midway between Charles 
Lamb^s nourished spleen and poor Dorothy 
Wordsworth's rapture, who wept at her first sight 
of it. 

As we count these walkers over, we find not one 
romantic visionary among them. None of them 
hear lullabies in the air or haunting voices in the 
wind. They never lose themselves in the shadow 
of a cloud upon a distant mountain, or brood with 

26 



402 HIRED FURNISHED. 

a sunbeam over the heart of a voluptuous rose. 
No mystic thrills and pangs are in their love of 
nature. Such amorous dalliance they leave to weak 
legs and narrow chests, to summer hammocks and 
heated libraries. 

" It seems to me you have taken a great fancy 
for starting out alone," observed Mr. Cotter, when 
the summer had grown mature. " This is the third 
time you have told me to ' catch up ' with you, and 
then you must have run every step of the way, for 
I did not overtake you till close upon Ambleside." 

The lady smiled. It was an inward smile as 
well as a vague one, and escaped the other's 
observation. She said nothing, but continued to 
start first and alone upon those of the tramps 
that were to extend beyond Ambleside or Gras- 
mere, and she continued to reach the trysting 
place under green trees before him. Mr. Cotter 
labored with the puzzle in vain that Mrs. Cotter 
walked so very much faster without him than 
she ever did with. The lady recognized his 
bewilderment, but made no sign. 

Not even to say ''scalloping." 

In their long tramps over the romantic Lake 
District, to-day seeking memories of Felicia 
Hemans near her Bowness cottage, to-morrow of 
Ruskin half a score of miles away at Coniston, 
one day in the footprints of Dorothy Wordsworth 
at the Wishing Gate, where many a sob must have 
burdened wishes for selfish Coleridge, another 
day at lonely Blyntarn farm, where once young 
Agnes Green watched three days, for her parents, 
dead in the snow, and touched a nation's heart with 
her sorrow and her bravery, another up steep 



WINDY HOW. 403 

Elleray path to the picturesque home of the 
leonine poet who became professor of philosophy 
and writer of Noctes, up and down, hither and yon, 
seeking by tarn and ghyll, by lake and wood, by 
crag, gap, and pass, the most obscure and the 
most famous spots upon which poetic illumination 
has fallen, Mr. Cotter strode and his companion 
scalloped. Always they started out side by side, 
step by step. They did not talk much together ; 
none do who think much the same thoughts at the 
same moment, and to whom is no necessity for 
ecstatic whinnies in the face of august nature. 
Thus for an hour or two they strode in joyous 
sympathy, though mute. After ten stout miles or 
so the lady's devotion to nature began to grow 
apace. From time to time she called her com- 
panion's attention to flecks and flashes upon 
far hill-tops, to the gloom of distant vales, to the 
silvery winding of remote highways, the singing 
secret of near springs, the mystic murmur of way- 
side pines. 

With heroic patience the longer-legged Cotter 
stayed his strides and gazed just where he was 
bid, to see just what he was told to see. With each 
taking to his stride again, however, he found him- 
self in a measure alone. Sometimes three feet, 
sometimes six, sometimes a good many yards be- 
hind, the lady was meditatively engaged in what 
she called a Pursuit of the Ideal, but for which 
he had another name. This "pursuit of the 
ideal " was to all appearances and purposes a 
vague crossing from one side of the road to the 
other, with no visible purpose in such wavering, 
and with very visible increase in the number of 
steps to a straight-forward mile. 



404 HIRED FURNISHED. 

'^Step up! Step up, my Lady!" he some- 
times called to her. " You are beginning to 
scallop." 

" No such thing," she would answer, '^only you 
know the other side of the road from that on which 
I walk always seems smoother." 

" Never for the first two or three hours," he 
laughed. " The first ten miles is never em- 
broidered." 

And this is why one hapless, never-to-be-forgot- 
ten day she started alone for Grasmere, arranging 
to meet her companion, too busy to start so soon, 
at the tidy Moss Grove Hotel, where they always 
tea'd and lunched, then to proceed with him up 
the long slope to Parson Sympson's abode. 

" Now be sure not to tire yourself by too fast 
walking," he enjoined, as she departed. " Don't 
take the lower of the cabbage-field paths ; take 
the middle gates. Don't climb any fences ; don't 
wet your feet ; don't miss the pasture-turning ; don't 
climb any fences ; don't lose your way ; don't 
climb any fences ; don't try to square any circles ; 
don't — " 

" I won't/' said she. 

The long morning was all before her, the sun 
still rejoicing in the east. She could saunter as 
slowly as she chose, with as many poetic rests as 
she pleased beneath rhythmic branches. The dew 
lay very heavy on the tall grass, and for a time she 
sped on with huge English boots hke men-of-war, 
defiant of the wet and with skirts held to their 
tops, whicli was very high indeed. She did not 
even drop them when she met the farmer, who 



WINDY HOW. 405 

bade her a cheery " Good morning," in his cab- 
bage field, and told her the day would be pleasant, 
as he knew by his cows ; and she had not occasion to 
drop them again, until that awful moment the mem- 
ory of which makes her flesh creep to this day. 

Beyond the cabbage field a meadow, then a rest 
upon a billowy mound with white clouds, blue sky, 
singing insects, and a radiant world for company. 

Whither do vagrant thoughts wander from under 
the trees of a day in mid-summer? Are they 
thoughts at all, those dreamy wanderers, gathering 
sun-tinted wool from yon floating clouds drifting 
away to the shining Beyond no mortal eye has 
seen, as they pluck radiapt wool from the wings 
of summer winds, singing as they fleet, as they 
pick it rainbow-hued from the waving horizon 
line of distant trees, as they woo it from grass 
and humble flower, from expanses of dimpling 
grain, as they win it from shining bits of water, 
from far hamlets, seen in a vision? Are they 
thoughts at all, bringing wool of enchantment with 
which to weave the magic carpet, that never 
touches earth, yet never rises too far above it? 

Then another saunter of a mile or two towards 
a dark depth of green water, beyond which were 
certain iron bars, slender but strong. A full quar- 
ter of a mile before this deep ditch, the saunterer 
began to smile. It was really but a delicate sug- 
gestion of a smile at first, widening, by very slow 
but sure degrees, into what a vulgar mind might 
even describe as a grin. 

"Wouldn't I catch it," she thought, "if he 
only knew." 

With one foot on the lower bar, she balanced 
herself with care. The time had been that she 



406 HIRED FURNISHED. 

was less cautious, and the result not flattering to 
her self-respect to remember. She would not have 
had her tyrant know how she went over that fence 
the third and the fifth times of trying for the 
world. Or anybody else, indeed ! 

This time the bars did not give unreasonably 
beneath her weight, and with some perhaps more 
majestic than bird-like flutterings, she was over, 
decently and in season to fall into a man's open 
arms. 

" Perfidious woman ! " he exclaimed. '* This 
is the short-cut you kept to yourself to steal 
marches upon me, is it? How dared you climb 
such a climb without somebody on hand to gather 
up your fragments in baskets ? " 

The culprit could not speak for some time. 
Then she murmured tremulously : — 
*' How in the world did you find out?" 
" Merely by wandering this way myself one 
day. The moment I set eyes upon that tell-tale 
waver of the bars it was revealed to me in a flash, 
* Here 's where somebody always climbs in the 
same place who is short-cutting upon my usual 
short-cut from the Hawkshead road.' It was 
none of the farmers I knew, for there is no path ; 
so to-day when you started out I started too, and 
passed behind you while you wool-gathered in the 



WORDSWORTH'S ''PARSON SYMFSON:' 40/ 



WORDSWORTH'S ''PARSON 
SYMPSON." 

As for Sympson, who was he that these Ameri- 
cans thus jeopardized for him the urbanity of 
their relationship? Who was this dusty parson 
for whose sake two simple Cotters grew thus 
serpent-wise and wily, for whose sake one climbed 
frail iron bars, for whose sake one lurked beneath 
a hedge, for whose sake both walked on beyond 
Grasmere up the aspiring road he climbed so many 
thousand times ? 

Nobody knows anything about him in the dis- 
trict, that is, among the everyday folk. The ever 
busy catchers-up of every unconsidered trifle con- 
cerning Wordsworth, even they know very little 
indeed. Having ransacked records and memo- 
ries even to the extent of finding out that the 
dalespeople found Mrs. Wordsworth a hard woman 
to deal with, and that Wordsworth was fond of 
legs of mutton, and that Dorothy had more wits 
than all of them, these gleaners and winnowers 
are baffled in any and every desire to know more 
of Parson Sympson, Wordsworth's " Patriarch of 
the Vale," than Wordsworth himself has told. 
Even the intelligent care-taker of the Hawks- 
head library, pleasant Mrs. Black, who chatted 
with them of Kit North's mad rides over the 
countryside, playing midnight huntsman with the 



408 HIRED FURNISHED. 

farmer's cows, who could tell them of poor Hart- 
ley Coleridge with teeth on edge, that his father 
ate sour grapes, of radiant Dorothy Wordsworth 
gibbering and nodding in a garden chair, the mis- 
erable victim of her brother's anacondaism, — even 
Mrs. Black could tell nothing. 

Strange to say also, Parson Sympson's cot- 
tage seems unknown to the drivers of excursion- 
coaches and to the indefatigable photographer 
whose mill finds grist in the most minute of 
picturable Wordsworthiana. Only a passing men- 
tion of it is in one of the many Wordsworthiana 
booklets, — such a booklet as is not likely to come 
under the observation of the unliterary tourist. 

The Cotters knew the house by sight some time 
before the day on which they knocked at its door. 
The smoke from its chimney they had watched 
from afar, with tip-tilted noses that now the tea-pot 
steamed upon a hob and did not nestle in hot 
ashes, as when that chimney smoked for Parson 
Sympson's evening meal. They knew familiarly 
the tiny deep windows, the walls of lime-washed 
stone, and the farmyard before the door, long 
before the figure of a pretty young woman out- 
lined itself against the darkness and pleasantly 
invited them in. 

Up the long ascent to this Cot came one day, 
a century and a half ago, a motley train of pack- 
horses with jingling bells and pillioned riders, 
followed by more ignoble beasts, backed more 
shapelessly than desert dromedaries. It was ex- 
actly such a train as Macaulay describes when, 
throughout the country north of York and west 
of Exeter, all goods were carried by long trains 
of these pack-horses, the sturdy breed of which 



WORDSWORTH'S ''PARSON SYMPSONr 409 

is now extinct. Travellers of humble condition 
often made long journeys mounted on a pack- 
saddle between two baskets, moving at snail's 
pace, and often with great suffering from the 
cold ; such as this train did not suffer in that 
month of June. 

At the lowly door of this stone cottage the 
company finished a pilgrimage as picturesque to 
our times as any royal pageant, a merry journey, 
rich in pastime, cheered by music, pranks, and 
laughter-stirring jests, mischievously designed to 
mystify gaping yokels, and ending at this once 
bleak and bare cottage which would house for 
half an hundred years the head of that gypsy band 
" till from manhood's noon " (at forty-one), he 
became the Patriarch of the Vale, standing alone 
within this cot, " left void and mute as if swept 
by a plague." 

Wytheburn Chapel, where he, " Parson Symp- 
son," was shepherd of a flock of mountain shep- 
herds for more than half an hundred years, 
has more honor. The Keswick and Ambleside 
coaches stop before it every day, just long enough 
and no longer for a snapshot view of the interior. 
They stop, not because of Wordsworth, not be- 
cause of the Wanderer, the Vicar, the Solitary ; 
neither do they stop because of that Priest by 
Function, once so irregular and wild, by books 
unsteadied and by pastoral care unchecked, — for 
none of these, but because " It is the smallest 
church in England ! " 

That it is directly opposite the " Nag's Head," 
has perhaps nothing to do with the case. 

The " Nag's Head " replaces the famous 
"Cherry Tree," now retired under a thick veil 



41 HIRED FURNISHED. 

of ivy to the tranquillity of farming life, after a 
somewhat lively career. A buxom landlady who 
pronounces the coach-load a '' bad lot," because 
it seems not athirst, replaces him of whom Mat- 
thew Arnold wrote : — 

" Our jovial host, as forth we fare, 
Shouts greeting from his easy-chair." 

The little " Cherry Tree " was famed for good 
cheer long before Wordsworth's Wagoner yielded 
to the enticing of a fiddle's dinning, and met his 
ruin at the village Merry Night. 

A quarter of a century before Wordsworth came 
to Grasmere, a "Laker" wrote of the ''Cherry 
Tree": "They gave us a breakfast fit for labor- 
ing men : mutton, ham, eggs, buttermilk-whey, 
tea, bread and butter, and asked if we chose 
cheese, all for sevenpence apiece." Scarce won- 
der that this Laker added, " Do not imagine, good 
reader, that we gluttonized." 

Continued this writer : '' Two grandmothers 
were in the kitchen ; one of the old women was 
between eighty and ninety. She was a chatty old 
lady ; and as both my companion and I wished to 
give free scope to every one we spoke to, she had 
the clack of her sex and the privilege of years to 
say what she pleased. She performed both parts 
of questions and answers, and told us she had 
been a pretty shepherdess in her time, and that 
she had been too often upon Skiddaw in her 
youth to be ill in her old age. I mention this,'* 
adds our tourist, "to make known how healthy 
and cheery they live under the ' Cherry Tree.* 
I think a chatty old woman, when she is not too 
much upon the diffusive, is a most cheerful com- 



WORDSWORTH'S ''PARSON SYMPSONr ^W 

panion, and ought to command a respectful 
hearing." 

This chatty old woman of the " Cherry Tree," 
born before the eighteenth century, was one of 
Parson Sympson's flock. She knew that rustic 
figure, striding up from Grasmere Vale, carrying 
even yet something of its old-time air of the 
grander world beneath its later habit, as well as 
she knew the sound of the two little bells in yon 
humble belfry. Many a time, without doubt, she 
had eaten trout of his catching, and exchanged 
her own geese and ducks of the earth for his sky 
and water. She knew the amount of tithes she had 
paid him, and the sound of his home-made harp 
and viol. She was twenty years or more older 
than he, and remembered, without doubt, that first 
occasion, a score of years before, that the poor lit- 
tle mountain chapel had first a curate of its own — 
was served no longer by a beggarly and uncouth 
" Reader." She could well remember the jokes 
and gibes at the new parson's Northumbrian ac- 
cent, amid the rugged accents of the Cumberland 
and Westmoreland Dalesmen. She possibly re- 
membered something of the sermons with which 
this ex-courtier become parson (whom Charles 
Lamb afterwards declared the most delightful 
figure of "The Excursion") greeted his new 
charge. Parson Sympson was considerably alive, 
and in the vigor of something like three-score 
years that summer's day of 1773, when our Ram- 
bler chatted in the "Cherry Tree." Even while 
that Rambler did not gluttonize, the parson may 
have passed up or down the road. 

Why did not our Rambler espy him then, 
with weather-beaten complexion and bobbing 



412 HIRED FURNISHED. 

queue, and turn some of that diffusiveness upon 
a future phantom in EngUsh literature? Parson 
Sympson was of a class grown smaller in the 
nineteenth than in the eighteenth century. As 
a shepherd of souls he could scarcely be counted 
a direct guide to heavenly pastures, wherever he 
might end at last. He was a type of shepherd 
far older than the Christian pastor, piping amid 
his flock, rather than to them, with pagan tunes 
and music of wassail upon pan-pipes of coarse 
sound. Wordsworth's Priest was simply a good- 
hearted, kindly sort of humble hamlet squire, 
better born, better educated than his flock, but, 
like them, giving no thought to other than mun- 
dane things. He wore the livery of heaven, not 
to serve the devil in, but his own tastes, pleasure, 
and needs. That he devoted time vowed to his 
Master's service to fishing and shooting, rather 
than to cards and racing, was more a chance of 
taste and circumstances than of conscience. He 
was very much a boaster of the better days that 
were more roistering, and he reviled his Grasmere 
days as a downfall from them. 

Why did that early Laker not have prophetic 
sense enough to ask about the motley train which, 
about 1759, — when those rough and forbidding 
mountain-roads offered no access for wain, heavy 
or light, — wriggled itself slowly into the Vale ? 

Who knows that the diffusive dame was not one 
of the parish matrons who met that train at the 
cottage door? Even she, it may have been, who 
plucked the ruddy children from their well-poised 
baskets, drowsily rocked by the motion of a trusty 
ass. Perchance she gazed with curiosity, not un- 
mixed with rustic awe, upon the comely Matron rid- 



WORDSWORTH'S "PARSON SYMPSONr 413 

ing close behind, a woman of soft speech, and with 
a lady's mien, all so unusual to mountain-bred eyes. 
And that whiskered Tabby, was its mew Pasht-like 
and occult, as befitted the mystic familiar of a 
vagrant and prophesying train? How demeaned 
itself a cat contemporary with Sir Charles Gran- 
dison ? 

How far more interesting this Laker, had he 
encouraged non-octogenarian diffusiveness to be 
too diffusive, and served us a spicy dish such as 
austere virtue condemns when new, and savors 
with delight when time hath seasoned it well. 

De Quincey supposes Wordsworth's story of 
Parson Sympson's entrance into the Vale to be 
literal. 

In ''The Excursion," Wordsworth says that the 
good pair often described their fantastic, yet grave, 
migration with undiminished glee in hoary age. 
When disgusted Curate Sympson, weary of boot- 
less promises from titled friends, and having rev- 
elled long and frolicked industriously while waiting 
preferment, accepted angrily at last this beggarly 
curacy in what was then an uttermost part of the 
earth, Wordsworth was not yet born, a fact the 
inaccurate Opium Eater failed to observe. 

The " Chapelry remote " was in Cumberland. 
No parsonage went with it : and our Priest by 
Function was obliged to house his family seven 
good miles over the marshes into Westmoreland, 
whence he had a tough climb to the chapel by a 
road " winding in mazes serpentine, shadeless, and 
shelterless, by driving showers frequented, and 
beset with howling winds." 

He must always be in good season, too, buffet 
and trip as those Northern blasts might, for it was 



414 HIRED FURNISHED. 

the priest's business to gather his flock by ringing 
the bell with his own hands. 

Wytheburn Chapel was then a dependency of 
Crosthwaite, and was equidistant between the par- 
sonage and the mother church. The stipend was 
^31 a year. 

Naturally, the parsons must have another trade, 
even though so late as Arthur Young's " Tour," 
beef was but 2d. a pound, mutton 2\d.., cheese 2d., 
bread \d., milk i^. a quart, laborer's house rent 20s. 
a year. Even thus, few could live on their stipends 
and fees, but like " Wonderful Walker," of Sea- 
thwaite, must work at a dozen trades or more. 

" Wonderful Walker " was hedger, ditcher, tailor, 
dogger, sheep-salver, and shearer, weaver, brewer, 
harvester, schoolmaster, village lawyer, clerk, etc. : 
and he married a domestic servant, as many did 
in those days, when not put off with a fly-blown 
reputation, as Bishop Tusher was. 

He worked at his loom in his schoolroom, and 
at day's labor for his parishioners. He died at 
the good age these active Dalesmen often attained, 
almost an hundred, having brought up and edu- 
cated many children, to whom he left ;^2ooo. 

Sympson's predecessor at Wytheburn, whom the 
old lady of the " Cherry Tree " probably well-re- 
membered, had a salary of £2, \os. od., a hempen 
sark (or shirt), a pair of clogs, a whittlegate, and a 
goosegate. Whittlegate was the right of laying a 
whittle or knife at a parishioner's board two or 
three weeks every year, according to the house- 
holder's means. The whittler was obliged to fur- 
nish his own knife, few houses having more than 
one or two. Sometimes this knife belonged to 
the church, and was lent by the wardens. He 



V^ORDS WORTH'S " PARSON SYMFSONr \\ 5 

marched from house to house with his whittle, 
seeking fresh pasturage ; and, as master of the herd, 
he had the elbow-chair at the table head, which 
was often made of a hollow ash tree. A parson 
was thought a proud fellow who demanded a fork 
in those days ; he was reproved for it, and told 
that fingers, were made before forks. 

The goosegate was the right to pasture geese 
upon the common. One wonders how his chil- 
dren fared at home while the shepherd browsed 
thus, with his flock, " on taters and bacon on a bare 
fir board." 

Even with priestly perquisites from brides, 
babies, and bodies, not many sevenpenny dinners 
could they afford, however the " Cherry Tree " 
tempted with savory scents of mutton and ham. 

" Priest, come to your poddish " (porridge), 
" Priest, come to your taties," " Priest, come to 
your poddish," one of them told in old age had 
been his call three times a day for half a century. 

Naturally there was very little of the typical 
clergyman about these six-day farmers and artisans. 
Fustian jackets, corduroy or leather breeches, 
stockings of the coarsest gray yarn, and wooden 
clogs, stuffed with straw or dried bracken, was their 
frequent garb. Sometimes the sark, instead of 
unbleached hemp, was of coarse blue check, and 
over corduroy breeches, without braces, was worn 
a weaver's apron. For weddings and christenings 
the only change was to a black coat, the conven- 
ient surplice hiding all the rest. One of this 
bucolic clergy was an excellent judge of sheep, 
and drove superior bargains home. With due 
respect to his Sunday clothes, he took pains to 
retire and turn them wron!]:-side out whenever he 



4^6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

wished to examine flocks. When his examinations 
were over, his costume was turned again to its 
reverend side. This same parson was so keen at 
a bargain that it was well understood by the 
sharpest that, dealing with him, Greek was meeting 
Greek. 

" Well, I find this," said one to him, " self 
niver sleeps but wi' ya ee oppen." 

" Eh, Johnny," was the answer, " thou has 
nobbut learnt hofe thy lesson. Self niver goes to 
bed." 

Still another (the Reverend Mattison) whose 
ordinary income was £12^ and never more than 
£2/^^ died the year Wordsworth was born. He 
was so industrious and penurious that he left 
behind him more money than the whole of his 
salary for fifty-six years at compound interest. 
He and his wife carded and spun wool ; he taught 
a school for ^5 a year. 

His wife acted as midwife, at a shilling each 
lying-in. She also was the cook of christening 
dinners, and pocketed every possible perquisite. 
This wife had done her part in swelling her 
spouse's fortune ; but at his death she and his 
children spent every penny he had amassed, and 
she was obliged to seek shelter in a charitable 
institution for widows of clergymen. 

This woman's father at her marriage boasted 
that he had married his daughters to the two best 
men in Patterdale, — the priest and the bagpiper. 

St'ill more remarkable was one who died about 
the time our ^' Priest by Function " came to 
Wytheburn Chapel. He was curate during forty- 
seven years of the neighboring chapel of Threlkeld. 
He lived like a Diogenes, upon eight pounds, six- 



WORDS WOR TH 'S " FA RSON S YMPSONr 4 1 7 

teen shillings a year. His dress was beggarly ; he 
lived alone, and slept upon straw with two 
blankets. In aspect a sloven, his wit was ready, 
his satire keen and undaunted, his learning exten- 
sive ; he was an agreeable companion, and, 
although fond of the deepest retirement, in com- 
pany became the chief promoter of mirth. He 
left no fortune behind him, but an excellent 
library and several manuscripts of great merit on 
conic sections, spherical trigonometry, and other 
mathematical pieces, says Clarke's " Survey." 

Most of his poetical pieces he destroyed before 
his death. Once the sub-dean, whose business it 
was to visit the inferior clergy in his district once a 
year, to see that they acted becoming their function 
(and could demand to see any corner of their 
houses), found great fault with this curate's house, 
dress, furniture, and probably food, as the priest 
was his own cook. " Dean," answered the dirty 
curate, " you have not seen the most valuable 
part of my furniture. There is contentment peep- 
ing out of every corner of my cot, and you cannot 
see her, I suppose — you are not acquainted with 
her. Upon the walls of your lordly mansion and 
in your bedchamber is wrote ' Dean ' and 
* Chapter,' after that ' Bishop.' No thought of 
these here, nor of equipage ; contentment keeps 
them olT." Then he repeated to him the sixth 
Satire of the second book of Horace : ^' Hoc erat 
in votis : modus agri non ita magnusP 

" A little farm, and a pleasant clear spring, a 
garden and a grove were the utmost of my wish. 
The gods have in their bounty exceeded my 
hopes ; I am contented." 

Sometimes these clerical hewers of wood and 
27 



41 8 HIRED FURNISHED. 

drawers of water, toilers of field and farm, were 
obliged to brew and sell ale, and make alehouse 
and parsonage one. Perhaps this explains a cer- 
tain old woman's complaint that her daughters 
husband, or suitor, kept bad company, — '' the 
parson and such." Another old lady, defending a 
too jovial minister, declared : — 

" Well, I '11 not say but he may have slanted 
now and then at a christening or a wedding, but 
for bury in' a corp he is undeniable." 

Neither is it surprising that particular evil smells 
were said to be as bad as chapels in sheep-salving 
time ! The chapels often were no better furnished 
than their ministers. At Wythop, the communion 
service consisted of a pewter cheese-plate and 
pewter pot ; the baptismal font, an earthen basin. 
Here the minister's stipend was tenpence a Sun- 
day, the exact Wage of a day laborer. Both min- 
ister and ploughman received their wage with 
victuals, the former in form of whittlegate. The 
poughman's day was from six to six ; but his week 
had six days, the parson's only one. 

Why should these rough Dalesmen waste time 
and work to write sermons? — especially as the 
Lake District peasantry have always been a prac- 
tical, never a very religious people, and always 
averse to long sermons. 

"What shall I say next?" asked one of these 
mountain preachers in the midst of a somewhat 
lengthy discourse. 

'^ Amen," said an audible voice from among the 
congregation. 

In 1767, the poet Gray one Sunday passed 
the " Cherry Tree " and the little chapel of 
Wytheburn, out of which the congregation was 



WORDSWORTH'S ''PARSON SYMPSONr 419 

just issuing. He says no more than this of the 
chapel in which thirty people would have been a 
throng ; but we know from Clarke's " Survey," 
a dozen years later that •' the chapel was a very 
poor low building and not consecrated; their 
burying-place is Crosthwaite." So late as 1792, 
when Parson Sympson had been thirty-five years 
its minister, Walker's " Tour " described the chapel 
as " wretched, in a scattered group of poor houses, 
everything about it cold and comfortless." 

Had the poet Gray stopped to peep in, he 
would have seen very much such an interior as 
Kit North described even sixty years later at 
Wastdale — about a dozen benches, the reading- 
desk scarcely to be distinguished, humble the 
pulpit, and lowly the altar, and earthen floor, and 
bare stone walls, weather-stained, with penetrating 
damps and driving tempests. 

On that October day of 1767, in all probabiHty, 
it was our Priest who read the usual prayers in 
the chapel, and for his gracious majesty King 
George, third of the name, as he had ten years 
earlier prayed for the second of these German 
dullards. A picturesque issuing that (to us), a 
company of mountain shepherds who spun the 
fleeces of their own sheep, and knew themselves 
fine in Sunday best of undyed homespun, the 
white and black fleeces mixed. How dandy the 
full-skirted coats ornamented with huge brass 
buttons, and the waistcoats opened in front, if 
perchance the home-woven sark boasted a snowy 
frill. Breeches were buttoned tightly across the 
haunches, so as to keep up without braces, not yet 
invented. Many are the bows of ribbon and 
bright buttons on these Sunday breeches ; some 



420 HIRED FURNISHED. 

of the richer Dalesmen's breeches, of buckskin, 
intended to endure long after the owner grew too 
large for them or shrank too small. 

Buxom belles and matrons are in homespun 
linsey-woolsey gowns, well above the ankle. 
Brightly buckled shoes were of coquetry as well as 
of service, and many a foot in those days sought 
the fender without need of the fire. Our Priest 
by Function is not long after the others, for he 
doffs his surplice behind a curtain. He is in 
clerical black, knee-breeches and yarn stockings, 
all probably somewhat weather- rusted from their 
thirteen miles' struggle every Sunday through fre- 
quent sunshine and tempest, and he wears a 
cocked hat somewhat worse in form and color 
than the day it finished its caravan journey, a 
dozen or more years ago. 

Wytheburn Chapel is no longer wretched or 
grim, but snowily neat. It has spruce belfry and 
pleasant-voiced bell, a bell-ringer, vicar, and a 
memorial window, but not of our Priest. 

The chancel, of recent addition, is considerably 
higher than the original building, which gave it a 
singular appearance. It is still : — 

" Wytheburn's modest house of prayer, 
As lowly as the lowliest dwelling," 

and into it every season pour tens of thousands of 
Lakers, with never a thought of Parson Sympson, 
whose name shall endure when not one stone of 
these walls lies upon another. 

They were guided through the dusk of walls 
scarcely higher than one's head, beneath heavy 
black oaken beams, and beside windows of only 



WORDSWORTH'S "PARSON SYMPSONr 4^1 

doll-house size. The floor was of the same blue 
slabs of mountain-stone of Wordsworth's time. 
The slabs are worn now into ruts and furrows. 
In the great fireplace comparatively modern con- 
veniences are set ; but they knew from the flicker- 
ing light and flame just where Mistress Sympson 
cooked the timely treat of fish or fowl, '' by nature 
yielded to her spouse's practised hook or gun." 
They knew where all winter long in the peat 
smoke of the great chimney hung, with flitches of 
bacon, the burly hams and quarters of beef and 
mutton, making the well-stocked chimney con- 
sidered by eighteenth-century Dalesmen the most 
elegant furniture that could adorn a house. 
"Well-stocked" those chimneys surely were; for 
an eighteenth- century tourist mentions one in 
which he saw eight whole carcasses hanging at 
once. Beside the chimney, how easy to imagine 
still the high-backed settle, where the master sat 
by the light of tallow-dips, and sorted his hooks, 
and set his poles. 

Here we seem to see the 'Miospitable board," 
just by the " charitable door." This dim room 
was the general living and sitting room of Priest 
Simpson's family, the self-same room trimmed and 
brightened by the matron's care. It was also the 
clergyman's only study, amid pots and pans, and 
the bustle of daily needs, of butter and cheese 
making, spinning, weaving, dyeing, washing, pick- 
ling, quilting, preserving, herb-distilling, fat-render- 
ing, candle-dipping, fowl-plucking. " He might 
be considered lucky, if he had a dozen dog- 
eared volumes among his pots and pans," wrote 
Macaulay of such as Parson Sympson. 

To cover these very slabs, Mistress Sympson 



422 HIRED FURNISHED. 

wove a fair carpet of homespun wool, dyed with 
gay hues ; not for daily use, but kept for festal 
days, when three unknown poets came to tea, or 
Dorothy Wordsworth came with her work, while 
WilHam and the Priest joined Southey and Col- 
eridge, to fish in Wytheburn water till supper-time. 
Mistress Sympson hung snow-white curtains to 
these mite^ of windows ; and, for mats, at thresh- 
olds, she braided tough moss and mountain- 
plants. She was a pattern wife, devoted to her 
home, which she apparently rarely left, and to all 
appearances without tastes that craved a wider 
earth and higher sky. She was contented, for so 
also is a snail in its way ; but what she really was 
in potentiahty, v/ho ever knew? Till the sun 
kissed it the goldenest field was but clods. With- 
out attrition of other minds, in books, newspapers, 
or conversation, without even a weekly sermon, 
that only stimulus of so many bucolic minds, why 
should a mind, however full of latent fire, give out 
one single spark? 

Dorothy Wordsworth speaks of Mistress Symp- 
son in old age as, " mild and gentle, yet cheerful 
and much of the gentlewoman." This seems to 
imply that she was only " much," not "altogether," 
the gentlewoman. Probably she was really more 
the eighteenth-century mountain-shepherd's help- 
meet, than the equal of the showy courtier her 
brother's pen represents the husband. 

Probably also that showiness was chiefly in the 
old man's bombastic talk. 

Mistress Sympson's kitchen-parlor is now the 
farm-house kitchen, and Wytheburn's Vicar has a 
parsonage within stone's throw of the church. 
The present occupant shows her parlor, rich in 



WORDSWORTH'S '' PARSON' SYMFSON." 423 

framed photographs and antimacassars, proud of 
her modern Brussels carpet, its white ground 
strewn with immense roses. 

The Wordsworths and the Sympsons were very 
" neighborly," albeit three miles were between them, 
and the Sympsons already aged when the young 
people came to the Vale. Dorothy writes in one 
of her letters that the old man of eighty was as 
active as a man of fifty. Her Grasmere Journal 
contains various mentions of the household. 

On a June day of 1800, when the Priest by 
Function was eighty-five, we read : *' William 
and I walked up to the Sympsons'. William and 
old Mr. Sympson went to fish in W^ytheburn 
water." 

A litde later in the same year : " On Sunday, 
we made a great fire and drank tea in Bainriggs 
[wdod], with the Sympsons," 

Coleridge and his wife were of this party. It 
was not a hymning and psalming one, we may be 
sure, though on a Sunday and with three parsons, 
present and ci-devant. 

One was Coleridge, the ex-Unitarian, who 
had preached a candidature sermon in nankeen 
trousers, blue coat, and brass buttons ; another, 
Priest Sympson's ordained son ; and Priest Symp- 
son himself, who still retained a flashing eye, a 
burning palm, a stirring foot, a head which beat 
at nights upon its pillow with a thousand schemes. 
On September 3, 1800. our Priest by Function 
climbs Helvellyn with William and John Words- 
worth, the elder of the two brothers a third his 
age. On a May day of 1802, Dorothy and Wil- 
liam met Coleridge at Wytheburn, and found the 
Patriarch fishing there. Again Dorothy considers 



424 HIRED FURNISHED. 

it lucky that Miss Sympson comes into Dove 
Cottage and takes William from his struggle with 
the " Leach Gatherer." 

Dorothy, on her way home from her long walks 
with her brother, sometimes stops at the Symp- 
sons' to borrow a shawl. The Journal abounds 
with mentions of walks to Keswick and Wythe- 
burn. Scarcely one was without a call at the par- 
sonage, a word with its inmates, even w^hen no 
note is made of such. " Mr. Sympson came . . . 
and brought us a beautiful drawing which he had 
done." This could scarcely be the fiddling, 
scheming, climbing Patriarch, but probably the 
poetical son, a clergyman who had preceded 
Wordsworth by ten years or more at the Hawks- 
head Grammar School, where both spent eight or 
ten years, and whom Wordsworth (many years 
later) considered entitled to that place among 
Westmoreland poets which has never been ac- 
corded him. His principal poem, now perished, 
"The Vision of Alfred," Wordsworth thought "in 
versification harmonious and animated, and con- 
taining passages of splendid description." 

" He was a man of ardent feelings," wrote 
Wordsworth, "and his faculties of mind, partic- 
ularly of memory, were extraordinary." With him 
one day Wordsworth talked of Pope, and found 
fault with his versification. The other defended 
Pope with warmth, almost with irritation, till Words- 
worth said, " In compass and variety of sound, 
your own versification surpasses his." 

"Never," continued Wordsworth, "shall I for- 
get the change in his countenance and tone of 
voice ; the storm was laid in a moment ; he no 
longer disputed my judgment, and I passed im- 



WORDSWORTH'S ''PARSON SYMPSON." 4^5 

mediately in his mind, no doubt, for as great a 
critic as ever lived." 

Another son of the family, not one pannier- 
poised into the Vale, but native of it, inherited 
his father's early disposition towards revelling and 
frolicking. 

Something, too, of the Matron's gentleness may 
have fated him to failure. He was sent forth 
from that primitive Vale to try the paths of for- 
tune in the open world, — Birmingham perhaps, or 
Manchester, even perhaps only small Penrith. 
Whichever it was, proved too much for him. The 
son of a long revelling and industriously frolick- 
ing father failed entirely, " before the suit of 
pleasure." 

After what dusty fallings and angry disappoint- 
ments at home, we know not, but may imagine, he 
returned to the Vale humbly to till his father's 
glebe. Wordsworth, after 1820, suppressed the 
lines of " The Excursion " relating to this son and 
to the youngest daughter, who : — ■ 

" In duty stayed 
To lighten her declining mother's care ; 
But ere the bloom had passed away, which health 
Preserved to adorn a cheek no longer young, 
Her heart, in course of nature finding place 
For new affections, to the holy state 
Of wedlock they conducted her, but still 
The bride, adhering to those filial cares, 
Dwelt with her Mate beneath her Father's roof." 

This daughter died five years before her mother. 
Her ever-active father outlived her six years and 
more, outlived her child and the glebe-tilling wan- 
derer, his son. 

The Sympson graves are no longer " unsociably 



426 HIRED FURNISHED. 

sequestered," as Wordsworth described them in 
his " Churchyard among the Mountains." 

Death's harvests have been rich since those 
words were written. 

Very near the graves are those of all the Words- 
worths, and of Hartley Coleridge, whom the 
Sympsons knew only as a blithe and buoyant 
child, never " untimely old — irreverendly gray." 

Jane, the youngest of the Sympsons, died first, 
aged thirty-seven, in 1801. Mary, the mother, 
twelve years our Priest's junior, died in 1806, at 
feighty-one. In June, 1807, after his glebe-tilKng 
son's death, and the far absence of his only two 
children, the old man went one afternoon across 
the road to note the growth of his garden. Per- 
haps at that very moment lower down in the Vale 
the family of the poet wondered how he would pass 
those remnant days, that stanch old man bearing 
the wintry grace and comeliness of unenfeebled 
age. " What titles will he keep — will he remain 
musician, gardener, builder, mechanist, a planter 
and a rearer from the seed ? " 

Even while they asked each other if it were 
possible, witli his household swept away as by a 
plague, and hillocks grown green in Grasmere 
Cliurchyard, he could still remain the man of hope, 
with forward-looking mind, he had always been, — 
even then death fell upon him. 

The long life came to its end amid June scents 
and sounds in his garden. Perhaps his aged eyes 
saw in those swift-flitting shadows of clouds, 
shadows of things celestial. Perhaps to him came 
visions of his manhood's noon, and the cloud 
shadows seemed visions of the fantastic caravan 
which half a century before stopped at almost this 



WORDSWORTH'S "PARSON SYMPSON.'' 42/ 

very spot. There, perhaps, he saw the gentle wife 
riding her pony with the grace of immortal youth. 
He saw her bending forward to gaze upon the cot 
where the old age of earth stole upon her. Per- 
haps he saw bounding children dancing upon those 
gray hills of earth and time. Who knows even 
that he saw not the well-remembered Tabby (how 
often had they spoken of her long after every atom 
of her had come up again from earth in grass and 
flower !) float dreamily across Helm Crag, just 
as all grew dim to him — even the blue June sky. 

" Like a shadow thrown 
Softly and lightly from a passing cloud, 
Death fell upon him." 

The Sympson garden still remains almost pre- 
cisely as it was that day. A new gate replaces the 
old ; but the weather-stained oaken posts may very 
well be the same that the old man touched in 
passing through them for the last time. These 
things remain, and his phantom presence. Not 
one single memory of him would exist on earth but 
for an unknown and unpromising youth, lower 
down in the Vale. Parson Sympson himself had 
no love for the pen, that little instrument which 
preserves lives and histories. While Minister of 
Wytheburn he kept no records even of the churcli, 
and no scrap of his writing remains in the world. 
Yet because of that obscurely writing youth he 
became one to whose receding footsteps upon the 
sands of life and time an occasional pilgrim listens 
with rapt interest, and for whose soul breathes, per- 
haps, even an unconscious prayer. 



428 HIRED FURNISHED. 



MONA. 

One glorious morning they left Windy How Cot 
to stately Mrs. B., and went wandering o'er land 
and sea for a space of four days. Mr. Cotter, as 
usual, had certain hesitations and even got so far 
as to say, "Cheap trippers ! Week-enders !" 

He wished he had not, for then his companion 
remembered all the " I told you so's " kept in 
reserve since their bank holiday on Sark. 

She remembered. 

So now does he ! 

They walked four radiant miles, all blessedly 
down-hill through a winding road that continually 
took them almost off their feet with delight. They 
saw Ruskin's home, the one to which Mrs. Lynn 
Linton went as a bride ; they saw Wordsworth's 
mountains near and far, and placid Coniston 
water. Also they met a little mountain maid who 
said she had got the dinner ready, and now was 
going to call father and mother. She looked so 
very small that Mrs. Cotter asked in surprise : 

'' How did you cook the meat? " 

" Only pertaters for dinner," answered the httle 
maid. 

At Coniston they took a train for Barrow, — 
*' Barrer," the Manxmen name it, — and a short 
time after were trundled down to the water's edge. 



MONA. 429 

Mona or Manxman ? You may have your choice 
between the mascuhne and feminine form for the 
little steamers plying between England and the Isle 
of Man, although the steamer is always " she," 
whatever her name. They ply on alternate days, 
and the Cotters happened upon the Manxman's 
day. 

Whether you buy your ticket for Mona, for Man, 
or for Manxland, you will get there all the same. 
And whichever it be, in your imagination you will 
not wonder that Mr. Gladstone fell in love with it 
at first sight. He, we may be sure, never thinks 
of the island as other than Mona, dainty name 
holding within its music the very essence of the 
island's poetic beauty, as it was when Gladstone 
fell in love. The islanders themselves never name 
it else than "The Island." To them "The 
Island " is the universe, the rest of the world but 
fringe upon Mona's raiment. 

The Manxman was not crowded with passengers, 
for now was the ebb of the season. The most of 
them seemed Manx people, those in the steerage 
alniost entirely so. The Americans, with first-class 
tickets, voyaged part of the way in this open and 
airy steerage, more interested in the conversation 
of humble islanders than in the silence of those 
whose passage cost fifty cents more. 

One old woman, neatly dressed but with 
poverty's neatness, gazed tearfully upon England's 
receding shores. A younger woman tried to 
comfort her by saying, " It will not be for long ; 
as you say, nothing is long when you are nearly 
eighty." 

Strange to say this was less comforting than it 
was expected to be. The old woman in tidy 



43 O HIRED FURNISHED. 

mourning still strained her eyes for fading England, 
and a dry sob broke from her throat. " If only I 
could be buried in dear England." 

"She has just buried my father/' explained 
the daughter to Mrs. Cotter. " All her children 
are dead but me, and I married a Manxman. I 
am taking her home to live with me. I think she 
will not bear it long ; to go out of England^ as she 
considers it, quite breaks her heart." 

Two people opposite were eating and drinking 
as if they had never eaten and drunk before. 
They were an elderly couple of Manx people ; and 
the Cotters took for granted that they had made 
the voyage often enough to know how besty^/r^ 
passer le temps^ and also ward off possible misery. 
Three bottles of beer, uncalculated bread and 
cheese made the pair merry with quiet and decent 
merriment. The Manxman forged steadily on, 
though the sky began to roll queerly from one side 
of the steamer to the other, and the waves seemed 
trying to catch it. The kodak was nevertheless 
brought slyly forth and quietly prepared for a snap- 
shot at the jolly eaters. 

It was never done. 

In the twinkling of an eye a battered umbrella 
opened before the banqueters and from behind it 
came sounds of mourning. 

" Come," said Mr. Cotter, hastily, " come up 
stairs ; they are snapshotting us in the steerage 
from above." 

" What impertinence ! " remarked the kodak- 
bearer. 

For fully an hour from the deck of the Manx- 
man the Americans strained their eyes trying to 
discover Mona in yonder bank of cloud. With 



MONA. 43 1 

soft, silent grace, as still and cool Diana floats from 
out her filmy drapery of a summer's night, Mona 
gradually revealed herself. She seemed a very 
Diana in her majesty of tall and silent beauty. 
Her pensive head rose among the brooding clouds 
of heaven, her calm feet were kissed by the murmur- 
ing sea as she welcomed with a wild halloo — 
" Don't crush ! Beware of Pickpockets ! " 
Alas ! Had they come from Barrow in Eng- 
land, daring the dangers of a four hours' voyage, 
to be thus greeted, as no different from the factory 
gangs which every summer descend Third-class- 
from-Saturday-to-Monday upon Mona? Was it 
nothing to their credit that they had brought to 
Mona's feet their very goldenest sheaves of im- 
agination, that she must thus yell at them in letters 
three feet long ? 

No, it was not Mona, fairy isle in mystic waters, 

— not Mona, cool goddess with warm modern soul, 

— but those of our own Gladstonian race who 
built that enormous semi-circle of flashy lodging- 
houses, those tawdry Palaces of Delight and 
Temples of Music and Dancing, to make the Isle 
of Man a paradise for the 'Arrys and 'Arriets of 
Lancashire. 

Fortunately 'Arry and his ^Arriet do not care for 
dells and caverns or for night-wanderings beyond 
gaslight. For thus the interior of the island is in 
a measure preserved from their horse-play and 
horse pleasures, and only the outer edge fur- 
belowed with music-halls, gaudy shops, and flashy 
caravansaries. These people who smoke and loll 
on an hundred doorsteps in intervals of tossing 
and tumbling each other, never even heard of Mona. 
To them she is only " Herman," and a capital 



432 HIRED FURNISHED. 

place from which to cast their year's accumulation 
of dirt into the sea. Douglas, the capital, on the 
edge first touched from England, is a perfect 
Pandemonium when midnight empties its Temples 
and Palaces into the streets. One needs to re- 
member that these bellowing creatures are not 
devils, but (the majority of them) hard-working 
human beings let loose from bondage. Hall Caine 
writes with great consideration of these annual 
invaders of Man. These invaders bring money to 
the island and make Man rich, so no Manxman 
audibly complains, even seeing beautiful Mona 
trampled under foot, dishevelled, and insulted. 
For great is Mammon even to romance writers. 

" If it is pleasant to you to see how people en- 
joy themselves," he says of these howling throngs, 
" and if you have a taste for enjoying yourself 
after the same fashion ( ! ! !), you cannot do better 
than to pitch your tent in Douglas." Which is to 
say, if you like your chaff of the coarsest quality, 
and monkey-tricks to abash monkeys, you need 
not flee Douglas the capital longer than for a few 
hours' car-excursion, from which you may return 
with your head on your young woman's shoulder, 
or with your best girl in your lap, and yelling 
to wake the dead. 

There were fortunately no 'Arries and best girls 
in the particular Douglas boarding-house that took 
the Cotters in ; evidently their tickets-of-leave had 
expired, and only a few undistinguished mortals 
were left. These were in holiday dress, and 
probably petty shop-people with longer leave and 
more expensive tickets than the factory folk. 
But the house was so precisely like the others of 
the vast crescent that they almost needed to tie a 



MONA. 433 

ribbon upon the door-knob to distinguish it from 
two miles of the same showily set tables, all with 
snowy cloths, shining cheap glass, and brutal 
flowers of muslin and paper, ostentatiously displayed 
through gaping windows. They managed to dis- 
tinguish it by the three brilliantly red heads 
and three pairs of glaring pince-nez of their three 
landladies and by a fat father, who lounged at 
the gate. These three young women, the Land- 
lady, are from Barrow, and come over every year 
for the season. The whole mean starving business 
is done by themselves, their fat father, lean mother, 
and shifty brother. Mamma cooks ; papa washes 
dishes, blacks boots, run errands, and points con- 
tinually to the picture of a brig in which (he says) 
he long sailed master ; the sisters manage chambers 
and tables ; and the son touts for guests at the 
arrival of every boat. He caught the Clovers from 
the Manxman, but did not tell that the break- 
fast bacon would be yesterday's boiled ham limply 
fried over, that the coffee would be in a dead 
faint, and that the whole rough-and-tumble man- 
agement was such as might be expected of cam- 
pers who flee to England and dressmaking before 
the earliest frosts. As this fleeing was a constant 
practice among the lodging-house keepers, and 
hundreds of huge draughty houses yawned empty 
all winter, a regulation is now estabhshed that no 
house shall be left empty between " seasons." This 
accounted for the maundering ghost that they 
saw through the kitchen windows, the tottering 
grandmother of the ruby-headed Three, who 
would be left to inhabit the house between seasons. 
Would she be happier then? for surely the poor 
old remnant must be aught but comfortable now, 

28 



434 HIRED FURNISHED. 

driven from pillar to post in the bustle of the 
season, with not even a chimney corner, that 
refuge of superannuation, to call her own. In the 
winter she could sit by a fireside, even if she had, 
as was probable she would have, the range of but 
one room. She could watch the firelight ; she 
could have her cup of tea ; and if she wanted 
ghosts for company, why there were doubtless 
many of them in her memory who could make 
the day cheery with echoes of the far away years. 
Yes, she must be happier when she inhabited the 
deserted jerry-built house alone. One could im- 
agine her tottering from silent room to silent room, 
and smihng to imagine herself the mistress of so 
much splendor, above all to be alone. We 
shudder at the haunting of our ancestors ; we groan 
for the aches and stains they leave with us : but 
worse sometimes the shudders at the haunting 
of our descendants, beings we cannot shake off, in 
whom we too often see our early selves, not at 
our best. 

The Isle of Man is celebrated for its Three Legs, 
its tailless cats, its Hall Caine, and a few minor 
things, such as druidical remains and Peel Castle, 
immortalized by history and Walter Scott. Hall 
Caine writes romances in Mona, about Mona, 
wherein he shows himself to have more method in 
romanticism than Walter Scott, who romanced 
about the island without ever having set foot in it. 
The island thanks Scott for his romancing by naming 
various restaurants and hotels " Fenella," and by 
giving the realistic tourist a definite map of 
Fenella's flight from the castle, as well as one's 
choice in Fenella rocks and other Fenella sou- 
venirs. Hall Caine has not yet given his names to 



MONA. 435 

any island monument, as doubtless will be given a 
few generations hence. None of the Manx people 
regard his work as other than a joke, for do they 
not know he tells things that never happened, to 
work upon the credulity of the rest of the world ? 

The Caines of Man are almost as numerous as 
the Christians. Caine was originally MacQuaine, 
and, as one sees, of Irish origin. Manxland is 
principally of Irish and Scotch origin and mixture, 
a fact which Manxmen deny or deplore in spite 
of the similarity of their Gaelic and of their un- 
English names, ■ — Cronk-ny Irey-Lhaa, Knock- 
sharry, Ballaugh, Ballaglass, and Dhoon. The 
Three Legs, The Arms of Man (the joke is too old to 
be wicked), are said one to spurn Scotland, one to 
kick at Ireland, the third to kneel to England. 

So determined are Manxmen, even when Mac- 
Quaines, not to be Irish, that they insist upon pro- 
nouncing their Port Erin in their own island 
fashion. They have a right to do so, no doubt ; 
but when Americans hear 'Arry ask his way to 
" Port Herrin," and hear natives describe to him 
where " Port Iron " is, no wonder their ideas are 
confused concerning the Port Erin on the map. 

Hall Caine has worked the Christians of Man 
into as many guises as a French chef works a 
potato. We have the Christians good, the 
Christians bad, the Christians of every degree 
between these two extremes. One wonders how 
the real Christians like this romantic liberty with 
their family name. Perhaps they all claim the 
good Christians as of their own branch, while 
the bad are of those other Christians, you know. 

Everybody knows now the inevitable Hall- 
cainesque cruel father and two rival brothers, of 



43 6 HIRED FURNISHED. 

which the good one gets the worse luck ; but not 
everybody knows that Hall Caine brings into every 
one of his romances bits of Manx local history and 
tradition that would make the island famous even 
were it less charming than it is. In '' The Deem- 
ster" is a tradition, or bit of fact, changed into Hall- 
cainesque concerning the Calf of Man. This un- 
impressive projection, an island at certain tides, 
was once the refuge of a philosopher (or possibly 
only a madman) in Bacon's time, who hid him- 
self there to experiment with a diet of herbs, if per- 
chance with such a regime evil passions might be 
killed, and the mind grow clairvoyant in a philo- 
sophic atmosphere. 

In Manxland the Americans grew sure that the 
author of " The Deemster " does not love the Manx 
cat, else why never immortalize that peculiar crea- 
ture ? The Manx pussy has surely mystery enough 
about her to make her worthy of romantic treat- 
ment ; for who knows her origin, who knows her 
fate, who knows the purpose of her creation, who 
has ever fathomed the mystery of her taillessness, 
varying according to circumstances? Many a visi- 
tor has paid a fancy price for Pussy, and carried it 
carefully away, expecting families like it. What 
mystery in the almost invariable disappointment ! 
Usually the Manx papa or mamma Felis, no matter 
how stumpy their own caudal pretentions, adopt 
the fashion of tails for their foreign-born offspring. 
The real Manx cat is quite common upon the 
island. Mated with an ordinary cat, the Manx 
species has kittens with tails betwixt-and-between, 
that is, longer than the Manx stump, but shorter 
than the ordinary appendage. With a predomi- 
nance of the ordinary breed in the mating, the tail 



MONA. 437 

in time forgets its Manx proportion. A physio- 
logical problem may be in the fact that, even when 
Monsieur and Madame Felis are Manx born and 
tailless, their children are sometimes entirely un- 
like them. The Manxmen are hard at a bargain, 
greedy and grasping ; but far from any one be it to 
say that ordinary kittens are ever detailed for sale 
to tourists. It would not be easy to pass off an artifi- 
cially tailless cat for the real article upon a lover of 
animals ; for there are many other traits of difference 
between them. The Manx cat is clumsy in form 
and ungraceful in motion compared with the 
ordinary feline. It waddles, has high and awkward 
hind-quarters, with coarse head and curiously sinis- 
ter face. Its peculiar motion and form h'as given 
rise to an unfounded superstition that it is a cross 
between the ordinary cat and the jack-rabbit. But 
the Manx cat is not solitary in its taillessness. 
The Burmese cat is the same ; and there are tailless 
cats in China. 

There are two funny little narrow-gauge railways 
on the island, trundling and tooting with a speed 
that would leave our electric cars out of sight 
— in advance. The Cotters named them Thun- 
der and Lightning, and took Thunder across the 
island to Peel, fleeing the horrors of Douglas. In 
one of Thunder's mites of carriages, they sat cheek 
by jowl with sad-faced Manx people whose re- 
markably long upper lips would have betrayed their 
origin had the Emerald Isle been three thousand 
miles away, instead of a score or so. When the 
strangers spoke a foreign language to each other, 
all these rustic faces, the long upper hps and 
gloomy eyes, turned suspiciously upon them. 

To speak French does not redound to one's 



43 8 HIRED FURNISHED. 

credit in an island which bends a knee to England, 
and where even the loudest of 'Arries is more 
esteemed than a member of the Academic fran- 
gaise. Years ago the Manx laws of debt and credit, 
as well as many other matters, were very different 
from English laws, and no person on Man could be 
pursued for debts incurred elsewhere. The vari- 
ous revolutions of France sent many queer cus- 
tomers into exile, some of whom were exiles only 
of choice. A fter exhausting their credit in England, 
many of these (as well as many English absconders) 
fled hither from their creditors. They were a reck- 
less, roistering, spendthrift gentry, and their fantastic 
deeds and manners not only astonished the natives, 
but passed into grotesque tradition, and a mighty 
distrust of all foreign speech. A popular rhyme 
represents a crowd of this gentry upon the shore, 
greeting an incoming vessel with the chorus : — 

" Welcome ! Welcome, brother debtor, 
To this safe and jolly isle 
Where no jailor, jail, or fetter 
Dims the sweetness of our smile." 

Of herself, Mona is beautiful. The climate, 
made languorous by the Gulf Stream, and found 
too relaxing by many visitors (although Mr. Caine 
declares it bracing), is conducive to marvellous 
floral and arboreal growth. Fuchsias grow like 
trees, and houses are often entirely enfolded in 
their scarlet embrace. Many of the farm-houses 
are thatched and many of snowily-washed stone. 
The interior of these sylvan pictures is less attrac- 
tive. The same climate that makes vine-arms and 
tree-trunks strong has other effect upon those of 
Manx housewives, and tidiness is not a Manx 



MONA. 439 

virtue. The children are tow-headed, bare-footed, 
and ragged, and more frequently stand on their 
heads than feet, — that attitude being found more 
productive of tourist-pennies. In fact, the sum- 
mer occupation of these youngsters is following 
strangers about, some with gymnastic perform- 
ances, others with a monotonous chant continued 
for miles, till both the stranger's patience gives 
out and his pennies. Nothing makes one yearn 
toward King Herod so much as to stand upon 
one of these dizzying cliffs, and to find aesthetic 
raptures strangled at birth by a thicket of these 
paddy-looking beggar-brats, some of them sop- 
ping wet from standing on their heads in the 
water. 

Most of the rustic cots from which these young 
cut-throats rushed, upon news of the strangers' 
coming, bore the poetical inscription : " Plain 
Tea, \d. Knife-and- fork-Tea, 9^." 

Indeed, Tea was omnipresent. Strangers were 
evidently supposed to be gasping for it at each 
instant. The Lancastrian's money burns in his 
pocket when he leaves the factory for his annual 
vacation on Herman, and many a cup he accepts 
for the mere joy of paying for it. Very many of 
them spend thus in a fortnight's vacation the sav- 
ings of a year, and do it year after year in exactly 
the same manner. Hall Caine tells of some who 
have come here every summer for forty years, 
always with the same money, to spend it exactly 
in the same manner, to remain exactly the same 
hngth of time, then return to the mills for exactly 
the same routine of eleven months and two weeks. 
They come for a " regular old blow-out," and they 
get what they come for. 



440 HIRED FURNISHED. 

The scenery of the island is solemn and rugged, 
and dulcetly smiling. In variety, it is like Jersey, 
almost a continent in miniature, with its wildest 
glens tupp'nce. From various points the Scotch 
and Irish coasts are sometimes visible, also the 
ethereal mountains of Cumberland, those poetic 
heights of "Wordsworthshire." From Peel, a tiny 
excursion-steamer puffs over to Ireland and back 
in a few hours ; while Scotland is so near that many 
a Manx dinner has gone down a Scotch throat. 
One of the Manx ballads represents a husband 
grumbling at his wife's slowness in serving the din- 
ner, while the chimney-smoke attracts the greedy 
eyes of Scotsmen on the opposite shore. To 
retaliate for the loss of his dinners, the Manxman 
was not advised by the Manx law to kill his Scots- 
man, but if he did kill one he was to pay a fine of a 
sheep. Sheep were the cheapest of a Manxman's 
possessions ! 

One never forgets that poetic Mona, practical 
Man, literary Manxland, is an island. "Going to 
England," " Coming from England," is as much 
in the speech of the natives as it is the speech of 
England's farthest colonies. Like all the islands 
attached to the great central one called England 
(all except sad Ireland), it has Home Rule; and 
like the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, 
would rather sink to the bottom of the sea than to 
give it up. Like all the other islands, its chief 
officer or governor is appointed by the Crown ; but, 
as in all the others, save Ireland, its legislative 
body is indigenous and of an antiquity as pictur- 
esque, even if sometimes as grotesque, as the 
undated gargoyles of crumbling shrines. Two 
islands, by the way, Man and Jersey, were the last 



MONA. 441 

to surrender to the royalists during the Parliamen- 
tary War, and both were long held by women. 
We are told that women may not vote, because 
they cannot fight ; we are not told why Lady Car- 
teret, who held the Jersey Castle of Orgueil so long 
for the king, and the Countess of Derby, who held 
Man, were not stronger in command of men than 
if they had fought beside them. The Isle of Man, 
unrepresented in the English Parliament and en- 
joying Home Rule, has done its share in solving 
the Woman Question by giving them equal rights. 
Women exercise all franchises, including voting 
for the local parliament. 

As they trundled across the island in a toy car- 
riage, they were reminded again and again of the 
sadness of the Manx faces. They were reminded 
afterwards, too, that Mona is very small after all, 
even with its four towns, its rich history, its shrines, 
relics, and monuments of by-gone ages. For a mel- 
ancholy Manxman, hearing that they had walked 
across the island in less than three hours, was 
moved to sad-voiced bragging. " What a walker 
/ was when a boy ! I did n't think nothin' of 
ten miles, nothin' !'''' 

Neither did the Cotters. But had ten miles 
been the diameter of their universe perhaps they 
might have given them more importance. 

How the winds blow upon Mona, — soft, wistful 
winds, breathing that melancholy of Nature's soul 
which makes art's deepest poetry ! Those mystic 
winds, come from the distance into which no man 
has entered, seem never to cease their homesick 
sighing. They gather under the thatched eaves 
when a child is born, and murmur of the tears 
which life must not withhold from him. When 



442 HIRED FURNISHED. 

the bride goes forth from her father's home, the 
same prophetic sighing goes with her to her new 
home, where her welcome is soft wailing. Every 
dead man who lies over night among mourning 
kindred leaves to the watchers eternal memory of 
long hours of invisible elemental grief, the plaints 
that will never be long still over his grave. This 
wailing wind becomes an integral part of a Manx- 
man's memory, associated with all the sad and 
pleasant events of his life. When one remem- 
bers, too, that the Manxman is remarkably super- 
stitious, as islander's usually are, no wonder his 
face is sad amid the mystery and sadness of all 
this unimaginable world. 

" It would be hard to find in the world a more 
bright-eyed, cheerful-toned, humorous, and happy- 
looking race than the people of the little Manx 
nation," writes the author of the gloomy " Deem- 
ster " and the gloomy " Manxman," sad-faced 
Hall Caine, with gloomily-drooping head in 
all his portraits. " Cheerful, humorous, happy ! " 
Whence then the scowling hates, the skulking 
spites, the long-cherished revenges, that make 
the little Isle of Man seem in our author's pages 
something almost forgotten of God ? 

That reminds one that in Manxland and the 
Channel Islands the laws against witches were in 
force later than anywhere else. Only so lately 
as the forties, a Manx jury tried a Manx woman 
for commerce with witches. They had just 
asked her a leading question, when suddenly a 
deadly fright seized them. A strange, uncanny 
object, night- hued and wild, sped round the 
room. 

" The Witch ! The Witch ! " screamed tremblinsr 



MONA. 443 

audience and jury. Somebody caught the witch, 
and placed it in a suspiciously empty basket, when it 
immediately assumes the appearance of a terrified 
rabbit ! 

Peel Hill is a somewhat breathless little climb 
that paid for itself by a delightful view over the 
very top of the castle and of the sea beyond. Even 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, had he reached this hill-top 
during his one brief visit to Man, might have 
spoken the encouraging word, the unspokenness 
of which the guide-book meekly resents. 

"Nathaniel Hawthorne, the gifted author [how 
strange to name Hawthorne thus, as if genius itself 
were only of the tribe of Gifted Hopkins] of ' The 
House of the Seven Gables ' and several other 
famous novels, visited the Isle of Man when he 
was consul at Liverpool for the United States ; 
but he only gives a brief note of what he saw, and 
tliat note had reference to Kirk Braddon Church- 
yard, the rural appearance of which, and the sur- 
rounding belt of green trees, he greatly admired ; 
and as Hawthorne was one of those Americans 
who found very little to admire in the old coun- 
try, his approval is rather noteworthy." Thus 
the Ward and Lock guide-book, which also says, 
" Peel Hill is steep and trying to the breath of 
climbers, which makes it desirable to stop at 
Fenella's restaurant, and then we feel, if we have 
any romance in our nature, that we are approach- 
ing very nearly indeed the spot, almost enchanted 
ground by the force of genius, which we read 
about [and were so unwilling to leave off reading 
about] when ' Peveril of the Peak ' first came into 
our hands." This same guide tells that the 
gloomy towers on the very summit of Peel Hill 



444 HIRED FURNISHED. 

are known as Corrin's Folly, and were erected 
about seventy years ago by a Nonconformist of a 
very advanced type who especially disliked the 
burial service of the Church of England, and there- 
fore built these towers as a resting place in uncon- 
secrated ground for himself, his wife, and their two 
children. This is the bald truth, the kind of 
guide-book truth than which the ordinary tourist 
and tripper asks no more. So tourists and trippers 
struggle up Peel Hill from the Fenella restaurant, 
with cakes and cheese in paper bags, and bottles 
under their arms, to lunch near Corrin's Folly. 
They crack coarse jokes at the Noncomformist 
who would not be buried with better folk than 
himself, they prance and curvet^ they scream and 
chase each other, and think, " wot larks," on the 
very spot where once a soul wrestled with the 
Angel of its God. They scrawl their names on 
the towers, and aim chicken-bones and crusts at 
the ragged mounds. When neither tripper nor 
tourist amuses himself there, sheep wander among 
the crackling weeds and stretch themselves upon 
the polluted graves. 

For if a man builds a Folly,' what else can he 
expect than to be the butt of witless jokes with- 
out end? If he undertakes to strive with nature, 
what else can befall than that nature takes her 
slow time to undo all his foolish doing? 

Corrin was a silent Manxman who now sleeps 
in Kirk Braddon Churchyard, — the one admired by 
Hawthorne, and where also sleeps Henry Hutch- 
inson, Wordsworth's brother-in-law, under an 
inscription by Wordsworth as commonplace and 
prosaic as Wordsworth was himself. In the same 
enclosure is also the dust of the Reverend Patrick 



MONA. 445 

Thompson, vicar of the parish in 1680, who left 
three dollars to the church, so tied up that only its 
revenue of eighteen pence a year is available ; 
where also is the grave of Reverend John Kelly, 
L.L.D., J. P., who compiled a polyglot dictionary 
in the Manx, Gaelic, and Erse languages. Whilst 
conveying the manuscript of this laborious work to 
England, he was wrecked, but with great fortitude 
supported himself in the sea and held the manu- 
script at arm's length above the water for the 
space of five hours. 

In early life the silent Manxman Corrin lost his 
idolized young wife, who was soon followed by 
their two young children. The deaths came so 
suddenly upon him that he had no time to pre- 
pare a place for the precious dust other than the 
usual tomb in Kirk Braddon Churchyard. With 
the sweeping away of his entire family, the Manx- 
man's broken spirit naturally dwelt much upon 
the resurrection ; for whoever went down into the 
dust without longings unspeakable for that prom- 
ised Day? He was unlearned in books, and the 
sorrows of the great weeping world wrought out 
no hope for him, who knew only the island and 
scarcely more even of that than his farm in which 
uprose Peel Hill. But he believed unreservedly 
in the final resurrection of the body, the actual 
earthly substance of wife and children to meet 
him one day in the same fresh young beauty in 
w^hich the grave received them. Among his 
lonely imaginings came also the idea that places 
first touched by sunshine on that glorious Morn- 
ing would be the ones from which the seal of 
death would be first removed. Every day of his 
anguished life he saw the sun lighting the top of 



446 HIRED FURNISHED. 

Peel Hill long before Kirk Braddon graves came 
out from the grayness of early morning, and he 
was convinced that upon that golden hill-top he 
would earlier be united to his family. 

From that time the silent Manxman began his 
heroic folly. Stone by stone, he built these towers 
with his own hands, toiling up the steep, rough 
hillside day after day, bowed beneath heavy bur- 
dens, as much a martyr to his faith as any treader 
of hot ploughshares. Inch by inch, foot by foot, 
the clumsy towers grew, catching the very first 
gleams of light that uprose from the encircling 
sea. Month by month they grew, summer and win- 
ter, till the three stood there, gloomy almost as 
death itself when no sunshine was upon them, 
but transfigured in the morning light, and seen 
from below to be shining like a stone most 
precious, even Hke a jasper stone, clear as 
crystal. 

Then came the time to remove the precious 
bodies to the towered hill-top. Corrin chose the 
night, that no prying eyes should watch his work 
of faith, which to them was " folly." With the as- 
sistance of only one man, his own hired farm- 
hand, he removed the three coffins from the 
churchyard in the dead of night, and toiled up 
Peel Hill with them on his back, each stumbling 
step lighted by a flickering lantern. With his 
own hands the silent Manxman piled the earth 
above his dead, and gave them to time, till time 
should be no more and death fled away from the 
sunrise of the Great Morning, 

Alas ! It was folly to contend with nature, to 
insist that wounds should always gape and bleed, 
that nature would not cover them up with fresh 



MONA. 447 

interests, fresh hopes, as she covers the torn earth 
with new grass and flowers. 

In time Corrin married another wife, and 
became the father of other children. He lived to 
be an old man, with children and grandchildren 
about him. When he died, there was no thought 
of carrying him up to the towered hill-top where 
once his soul had agonized and his grief breathed 
a thousand prayers. What to those living sons 
and daughters was the long dead story of their 
father s vanished youth, however ecstatic, however 
bitter it had been in its time? So Corrin was 
carried to the very tomb whence he had stolen 
his treasures ; and there his dust lies in longer 
darkness, but in decency, while on the golden 
hill-top (now sold out of the family), cheap trip- 
pers make bone and bottle targets of his towers, 
and jeer at his " Folly." 

All this was told the Cotters by one of the 
scholarly and refined Manxmen of whom the 
island has its share, although in the hurly-burly 
of the season one sees no sign of them. The 
Cotters wondered what became of these archaeo- 
logical, antiquarian clergymen, and others of 
Douglas who love their beautiful island with devo- 
tion, during the weeks that the Lancashire facto- 
ries belch tlieir thousands upon Douglas and its 
neighborhood. Do they retire into their studies 
and draw the shades down, waiting the storm to be 
overpast ? Or do they leave their island to its 
annual frenzies, and take their own vacations else- 
where, only to return when the steamers cease to 
come loaded and shouting from England, and the 
doors are closed of these flashy caravansaries? If 
so, it is not pleasant to think of them driven away 



44^ HIRED FURNISHED. 

when their island is so beautiful. However, the 
tripper does not go everywhere. Many an elegant 
dwelling, castle, mansion, villa, and substantial 
farm-house is far removed from their presence. In 
these handsome homes the refined life is in no 
ways affected by the summer's debauch. 



SUNDRIES. 449 



SUNDRIES. 

" I TOLD you so, " said the lady Hirer. " I told 
you the Smiths, Browns, and Robinsons would 
die of envy of our Wine-Cellar. Just hear this : 

" ' We are dying with envy of your House-in- 
which-one-may-not-throw-Stones, and of all your 
other houses. Why, when such exploits as yours 
are possible, cannot we take our nervously pro- 
strated husbands, our over-worked wives, our poor 
but honest novel-writing, our robust ambitions but 
not robust fortunes to England for a year or two ? 
Please tell us if there are other houses, or if you 
took them all ; how does the general cost of living 
compare with ours at home ; what do you pay for 
bread and butter? Tea you say is cheap, how 
much for servant's wages, etc. ? ' 

" Etc. means too many things," continued the 
lady. " I might as well write a book and have 
done with it. The more simple and general ques- 
tions I will answer, such as Mrs. Robinson's ^ How 
much do you pay for the doing-up of a shirt?' and 
Mrs. Brown's ' Do you think the tips would reduce 
us to squalor? * — but the etcs. are beyond me." 

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Brown, Jones, and Rob- 
inson, — 

There are many other villas, cottages, and houses 
besides those in which we were so happy. As I 
told you, we had many answers to our advertisement, 

2q 



45 O HIRED FURNISHED. 

from all over England. I have no doubt we should 
have just as pleasant memories of our hirings had 
we never seen Pevensey or Clover Villas, or our 
soaring Ladder. Of the Dove Cote, we make an 
exception ; not because of the Cot itself, but of the 
ever-to-be-cherished friends we found on that radi- 
ant isle. Except in the height of the season, fur- 
nished country cottages are easy to find at an even 
absurdly low rent, for the dampness of England is 
an enemy to unoccupied houses. 

There was one at Rickmansworth, in the town 
itself, close by all shops, and the railway station, 
hired unfurnished by the year by a party of three 
friends. The three Englishwomen were artists and 
teachers with comfortable incomes. They desired 
a little place all their own, for the three summer 
months ; the other nine, they wished to let it, not for 
profit, not even for economy, but to keep the damp- 
ness from their dainty furnishings. Everything in 
the cottage was just what women of elegant tastes 
and not restricted means had " picked up," to 
beautify and make comfortable this v/orkingman's 
cot of six rooms. During the last two or three 
winters parties of ladies have occupied it, from 
September to June, at a rent of six shillings, or 
$1.50 a week. One party of applicants, by the way, 
did not appreciate the privilege within their reach, 
when they asked, " How much plate goes with the 
furnishing ? " 

Then in the Lake District, not a thousand miles 
from Windy How, an American teacher, with a class 
of six young American girls, had hired for ^5 ($25) 
a year an ancient stone farm-house, near village 
post-office and library, shops and " booterboons." 
The house was roomy, but dark, and the teacher 
must furnish it herself, was doing so at last .accounts. 

Sometimes owners of cottages do not wait for 
applicants. During several years, we noticed every 
autumn a furnished cottage, at Walton-on-the-Naze, 



SUNDRIES. 451 

advertised in our " Chronicle " for six shillings a 
week. The Thames Country exudes dampness from 
every pore. 

My advice to all you Smiths, Browns, and Robin- 
sons is, to select the part of England in which you 
prefer to begin your hirings, then to advertise in a 
local paper (be sure not to give an American address, 
but have all letters forwarded). The great dailies' 
do just as well, although more expensive, and will 
not forward letters. 

The owner of Windy How House, Miss Newlyn, 
has a number of comfortably furnished houses to let 
in various parts of the Lake District. One of them 
is in the most picturesque village of all England? 
Troutbeck, a picture of red roofs and antique gables 
climbing a glorious hill. During the season, these 
houses let for three guineas a week, including every- 
thing. During the other nine months, they may be 
had for a song. The Lake Country is glorious during 
the summer ; but its lovers declare that its period of 
divinest beauty is from October to June. 

As for the general expense of living in England, 
compared with ours at home, cela depend. Walter 
Besant has lately written that a chop and potato, 
cooked at home, need not cost more than \d. I 
doubt if the chop and potato can be cooked in an 
American home for only eight cents. I am bound 
to say also, that I never saw it done in England; but 
naturally many things may be cooked there, unseen 
forever by Americans. Boston and London expenses 
do not vary widely, except during the annual Ameri- 
can invasion of England. Thsn every boarding- 
housekeeper gets what he can without reference to 
any ordinary scale of prices. American invaders 
must expect to pay $20 a week in very modest 
houses, where the regular boarder pays exactly 
half the sum for precisely the same accommoda- 
tions. At the very height of the rush, hotel prices 
are frequently demanded in boarding-houses of the 



452 HIRED FURNISHED. 

central and popular Bloomsbury district; and the 
American may take or leave at that price, as he 
pleases, it is all one to the proprietor, who knows 
that no room goes empty at that season, no matter 
what its price. Not only are the summer prices 
inflated ; but " extras " are piled on, to amaze our 
countrymen accustomed to see everything comprised 
" in the terms. Unless by special agreement, lights, 
except a bedroom candle, are an extra, and the 
American is disgusted to be charged a shilling a 
week for a lamp in his room, whether it be lighted or 
not. Coals again are a monstrous extra; Ameri- 
cans frequently pay for them at a rate of $25 
a ton ! The only way to avoid this is to arrange 
for a fire at a stated sum per week. It may result 
to be a ghostly fire of kitchen cinders and ash-bin 
relics ; but it cannot cost $25 a ton. The best man- 
ner of "doing" London by those who have time at 
their disposal, and no money to throw away, is not 
to go into hotels, lodgings, or boarding-houses at all. 
Comfortable rooms without board may be obtained 
in every quarter, at all prices. Breakfast is usually 
taken in the house ; but the other meals wherever 
the sight-seer may chance to be. In a metropolis 
of countless restaurants and lunch places, such as 
London is, no man need go hungry with a shilling in 
his pocket, and none need spend more money than 
he intended to spend before leaving home. 

Housekeeping in London is no dearer than in 
American cities, perhaps a trifle less. Ordinary 
provisions, such as meat, fish, and winter vegetables, 
are about Boston prices ; the greater cost of fruits, 
summer vegetables, and rarer provisions is equalized 
by the cheaper rents and labor wage. Gas and 
coals are cheaper than in America, at least in New 
England; very many wealthy English women abso- 
lutely refuse to keep warm when coals rise to I5 a 
ton. 

Country housekeeping is cheaper than in our own 



SUNDRIES. 453 

country. Rents are excessively low compared with 
ours, and so are servants' wages. It is nowhere 
difficult to find an excellent general servant for $2.50 
a week, often less. They are almost always to be 
found, even for a few months, for the long terms of 
faithful service of which we hear and read are not 
for ordinary employers, but for great families who 
raise generations of faithful servants on their own 
estates. 

Milk, butter, eggs, summer vegetables, and garden 
fruits are no dearer than in our own country villages 
of New England. Strange to say, bread is a trifle 
cheaper ; whether because of baker's wages, the com- 
parative cheapness of fuel, and the less cost of the 
ovens, or all together, I do not pretend to say. Some 
things, such as tomatoes for instance, are always 
dear; some, green corn, for instance, one never sees 
at all. 

As for tips, they need not threaten squalor. Settled 
quietly in one's own hired-furnished, the American 
scarcely remembers that the tip system exists. No- 
body expects tips for ordinary every-day service, 
even though in towns the Christmas-box is a part of 
one's dealings with butcher, baker, and grocer. After 
fifteen years in Europe, I remember my surprise 
that Christmas morning in Pevensey Villa, when a 
youth in his Sunday best came to ask if there were 
"henny horders." I answered, innocently enough, 
" No, everything was ordered yesterday. I did not 
expect to see you to-day ! " The young man with- 
drew, looking extremely foolish. Unconsciously, I 
had given him the very best rebuke possible for call- 
ing for a Christmas-box (a tip), upon people served 
during only four or five weeks. In the country, 
where orders are not taken, but given directly by the 
purchaser, and purchases usually taken home by 
himself, no Christmas-box is given, unless one 
chooses to be generous. Tips, in fact, are chiefly 
used in travelling ; and the practice is gradually 



454 HIRED FURNISHED. 

decreasing in England, as it is gradually increasing 
with us. 

As for laundry bills, they are indefinite. In all 
Engh'sh housekeeping, everything is usually sent 
away to be washed. Definite terms are made for 
such work, so much a month, be the parcel what it 
may. Where bills are separately made, one each 
week, the payment is not by the dozen, as with us, 
but by the piece. Thus, two handkerchiefs or two 
towels are generally a ha'penny, a shirt " done up " 
fourpence, — everything in less proportion than in 
America. 

In all these country villages there is free postal 
delivery every day ; in nearly every one is some sort 
of a library, free or by subscription. In the hamlet 
which was the metropolis of Windy How was an 
excellent library and reading-room, with not only 
London and local newspapers, but some of the lit- 
erary journals and many leading magazines, includ- 
ing the American. It happened me there to drop a 
leaf out from the London " Academy " every time I 
opened it. It seemed to me that the leaf was placed 
there for a purpose, so I very carefully replaced it 
each time. One day I expressed my pleasure at 
finding the "Academy," to a bright-faced lady whom 
I frequently met there, and who had kindly helped 
me find the books I wanted. 

" I am glad to hear you say so," smiled the lady; 
" my sister and I give the ' Academy ; ' we were about 
to withhold it as never read. I put a leaf in every 
one to detect a reader, but seldom find it removed." 

An agreeable feature of these little libraries is that 
they always contain books of local interest, books 
concerning the history of the region, biographies of 
celebrities connected in any way with it, volumes of 
poetry relating to it, and all novels and romances 
of which it is the scene. Thus, the Hawkshead 
library furnished everything necessary for acquaint- 
ance with Wordsworth, Southey, De Quincey, Col- 



SUNDRIES. 45 5 

eridge, and poor Hartley, Christopher North, Mrs. 
Hemans, Harriet Martineau, the Arnolds, — all whose 
lives are inwrought with the lives of the people and 
the places. Where the village library proves insuffi- 
cient, Mudie's is always at hand, his boxes of books 
travelling incessantly all over England, from Oxford 
Street into the remotest corner of the farthest 
province. 

You see, dear Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons, I 
have answered your questions, even to some of the 
etcs. 

Yours, 

L. H. 



THE END. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publicatio7is. 



]foam of tbe Sea. 

By GERTRUDE HALL, 
Author of " Far from To-day," "Allegretto," " Verses," etc. 

16mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 



Miss Gertrude Hall's second volume of short stories, " Foam of the Sea and 
Other Tales," shows the same characteristics as the first, which will be instantly 
remembered under the title of " Far from To-day." They are vigorous, fanciful, in 
part quaint, always thought-stirring and thoughtful. She has followed old models 
somewhat in her style, and the setting of many of the tales is medieval. The 
atmosphere of them is fascinating, so unusual and so pervading is it; and always 
refined are her stories, and graceful, even with an occasional touch of grotesquerie. 
And there is an underlying subtleness in them, a grasp of the problems of the 
heart and the head, in short, of life, which is remarkable ; and yet they, for the 
most part, are romantic to a high degree, and reveal an imagination far beyond 
the ordinary. " Foam of the Sea," like " Far from To-day," is a volume of rare 
tales, beautifully wrought out of the past for the delectation of the present. 

Of the six tales in the volume, " Powers of Darkness " alone has a wholly nine- 
teenth century flavor. It is a sermon told through two lives pathetically misera- 
able. "The Late Returning" is dramatic and admirably turned, strong in its 
heart analysis. " Foam of the Sea " is almost archaic in its rugged simplicity, 
and "Garden Deadly" (the most imaginative of the six) is beautiful in its 
descriptions, weird in its setting, and curiously effective. "The Wanderers" is a 
touching tale of the early Christians, and " In Battlereagh House" there is the 
best character drawing. 

Miss Hall is venturing along a unique line of story telling, and must win the 
praise of the discriminating. — The Boston Times. 

There is something in the quality of the six stories by Gertrude Hall in the 
volume to which this title is given which will attract attention. They are stories 
which must — some of them — be read more than once to be appreciated. They 
are fascinating in their subtlety of suggestion, in their keen analysis of motive, 
and in their exquisite grace of diction. There is great dramatic power in 
"Powers of Darkness" and " In Battlereagh House." They are stories which 
should occupy more than the idle hour. Tliey are studies. — Boston Adver- 
tiser. 

She possesses a curious originality, and, what does not always accompany this 
rare faculty, skill in controUing it and compelling it to take artistic forms. — Mail 
and Express. 

Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by 
Ike Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, Mass. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 

FAR FROM TO-DAY. 

31 iJolumc of S'torie^* 

By GERTRUDE HALL, 
%6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 



THESE stories are marked with originality and power. The titles 
are as follows : viz., Tristiane, The Sons of Philemon, Serviroi, 
Sylvanus, Theodolind, Shepherds. 

Miss Hall has put together here a set of gracefully written tales, — tales of long 
ago. They have an old-world mediaeval feeling about them, soft with intervening 
distance, like the light upon some feudal castle wall, seen through the openings of 
the forest. A refined fancy and many an artistic touch has been spent upon the 
composition with good result. — London Bookseller. 

" Although these six stories are dreams of the misty past, their morals have a 
most direct bearing on the present. An author who has the soul to conceive such 
stories is worthy to rank among the highest. One of our best literary critics, Mrs. 
Louise Chandler Moulton, says : " I think it is a work of real genius, Homeric in 
its simplicity, and beautiful exceedingly.'" 

Mrs. Harriet Prescott Spofford, in the Neivbtiryport Herald:^ 
" A volume giving evidence of surprising genius is a collection of six tales by 
Gertrude Hall, called ' Far from To-day.' I recall no stories at once so powerful and 
subtle as these. Their literary charm is complete, their range of learning is vast, and 
their human interest is intense. ' IVistiane,' the first one, is as brilliant and ingenious, 
to say the least, as the best chapter of Arthur Hardy's * Passe Rose;' 'Sylvanus' 
tells a heart-breaking tale, full of wild delight in hills and winds and skies, full of 
, pathos and poetry ; in ' The Sons of Philemon ' the Greek spirit is perfect, the 
story absolutely beautiful ; ' Theodolind,' again, repeats the Norse life to the echo, 
even to the very measure of the runes; and 'The Shepherds' gives anot-her reading 
to the meaning of 'The Statue and the Bust.' Portions of these stories are told 
with an almost archaic simplicity, while other portions mount on great wings of 

Eoetry, 'Far from To-day,' as tlie time of the stories is placed; the hearts that 
eat m them are the hearts of to-day, and each one of these_ stories breathes the joy 
and the sorrow of life, and is rich with the beauty of the world." 

From the Londott Acadejny, December 24th : — 

" The six stories in the dainty volume entitled ' Far from To-day* are of imagina- 
tion all compact. The American short tales, which have of late attained a wide and 
deserved popularity in this country, have not been lacking in this vitalizing quality; 
but the art of Mrs. Slosson and Miss Wilkins is that of imaginative realism, while 
that of Miss Gertrude Hall is that of imaginative romance; theirs is the work of 
impassioned observation, hers of impassioned invention. There is in her book a 
fine, delicate fantasy that reminds one of Hawthorne in his sweetest moods; and 
while Hawthorne had certain gifts which were all his own, the new writer ex- 
hibits a certain winning tenderness in which he was generally deficient. In the 
domain of pure romance it is long since we have had anything so rich in simple 
beauty as is the work which is to be found between the covers of ' Far from 
To-day.' " 

Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the 
piiblishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 



Storv of 




A Novel, ^y olive Schreiner, author of "Dream 
^^^4r#^^^^%r Life and Real Life," " Dreams," 

" Trooper Peter Halket," etc. l6mo. 

Cloth. 60 cents. 

It is written with so constant an intensity of passionate feeling, with so much 
sincerity and depth of thought, with such a terrible realism in details, with so much 
sympathy and high imagination in its broader aspects, and finally with such a tense 
power, as of quivering muscles, that the reader, at once repelled and fascinated, can- . 
not lay the book down until he has turned the last page. — Boston Daily A dvertiser. 

" The Story of an African Farm," by Ralph Iron (Olive Schreiner), is one of 
those books which are remarkable because they voice with power the passionate charac- 
teristics of the age in which they are written. It is in the first place a graphic picture 
of life in a South African colony ; but even its fidelity to this novel phase of existence 
is of far less importance than its passionate earnestness, its intense emotion, its pro- 
found sympathy with the struggle of a mind naturally devout with the restless unfaith 
of the time. The reader is stirred so deeply that it is hard to say whether what he 
feels is pain or pleasure, only that he cannot shake off the hold of the book's fascina- 
tion. It is one of the most emotional of recent novels, and not to read it is to miss a 
profound sensation. — T/ie Courier. 

There is power of a peculiar sort in this little volume of sketches of farm life 
among the Boers in South Africa. Each of the characters has a striking individuality, 
and the descriptions of the manner of life they lead have so much of the color of 
reality, that they must rest upon a basis of actual experience. The contrast of types is 
sharply accentuated, and the development of character is cleverly indicated. The 
book, in fact, is not so much a story as it is a study of character as affected by peculiar 
surroundings. Yet a strange fascination attaches to the fortunes of the headstrong 
young English girl, Lyndall, whose singular career and pathetic fate supply some of 
the most effective pages in the book. There is humor of a grim sort, too, in the pic- 
ture of the hypocritical adventurer, Bonaparte Blenkins. — Book Buyer. 

"The Story of an African Farm" is in many ways a remarkable book. Of 
downright power, yet written with poetic delicacy of touch, as absolutely original in 
method and treatment as its scenes are novel and its people new, it throws itself across 
the level of ordinary fiction like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. In its 
structure the romance, as its author calls it, is as intricate as a spiders' web, and as 
full of surprises as if one of its objects was to lure the reader of light literature into 
the very heart of a psychological jungle ere he suspected whither his steps were 
tending. — The Critic. 



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i6mo. Clotk Price, $L00. 



I. 

II. 
III. 

- IV. 
V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIIL 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 



KEYNOTES. By George Egerton. 

THE DAWCING FAUN. By Florence Farr. 

POOR FOLK. By Fedor Dostoievsky. Translated from the 
Russian by Lena Milman. With an Introduction by George 

Moore. 

A CHILD OF THE AGE. By Francis Adams. 

THE GREAT GOD PAN AND THE INMOST LIGHT. By 

Arthur Machen. 

DISCORDS. By George Egerton. 

PRINCE ZALESKI. By M. P. Shiel. 

THE WOMAN WHO DID. By Grant Allen. 

WOMEN'S TRAGEDIES. By H. D. Lowry. 

GREY ROSES AND OTHER STORIES. By Henry Harland. 

AT THE FIRST CORNER AND OTHER STORIES. By H. B. 

Marriott Watson. 

MONOCHROMES. By Ella D'Arcy, 

AT THE RELTON ARMS. By Evelyn Sharp. 

THE GIRL FROM THE FARM. By Gertrude Dix. 

THE MIRROR OF MUSIC. By Stanley V. Makower. 

YELLOW AND WHITE. By W. Carlton Dawe. 

THE MOUNTAIN LOVERS. By Fiona Macleod. 

THE WOMAN WHO DID NOT. By Victoria Crosse. 

THE THREE IMPOSTORS. By Arthur Machen. 

NOBODY'S FAULT. By Netta Syrett. 

PLATONIC AFFECTIONS. By John Smith. 

IN HOMESPUN. By E. Nesbit. 

NETS FOR THE WIND. By Una A. Taylor. 

WHERE THE ATLANTIC MEETS THE LAND. 



Chronicles of Good and Evil, 



By Caldwell 
By Mabel E. 



Lipsett. 

DAY-BOOKS. 

Wotton. 

IN SCARLET AND GREY. Stories of Soldiers and Others. Bv 
Florence Henniker ; with THE SPECTRE OF THE REAL, 

by Thomas Hardy and Florence Henniker (in collaboration). 

MARIS STELLA. By Marie Clothilde Balfour, 

UGLY IDOL. By Claud Nicholson. 

SHAPES IN THE FIRE. A Mid-Winter Entertainment. With 
an Interlude. By M. P. Shiel. 



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John Lane, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, London. "W. 



LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON'S WRITINGS. 



SWALLOW FLIGHTS. A new edition of " Poems," with ten 

additional Poems. i6mo. ^1.25. 

The appearance of the new editions of Mrs. Moiilton's volumes is something 
for the lover of poetry to be glad over ; for Mrs Moulton is one of the few real 
woman poets of the present day. Her work has an exquisite quality, and there is 
no lover of poetry but should make speedy acquaintance with her verse. — Review 
0/ Reviews, London. 

SOME WOMEN'S HEARTS. i6mo. (Paper, 50 cents.) ^1.25. 

These stories are written in charming style, and with a naturalness that shows 
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strain. — Post^ San Francisco. 

RANDOM RAMBLES. i8mo. ^1.25. 

English thought is touched with a delicate and graphic hand. French live- 
liness and Italian weather, Rome, P'lorence, and Venice, the Passion Play and 
Munich, a French watering-place, Westminster Abbey, London literary life, the 
streets and shops of Paris, — these are the things about which Mrs. Moulton 
writes, and which she tells of in that delightful and sparkling manner that one 
cannot grow tired of. — Thomas S. Collier. 

IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS. Lyrics and Sonnets. i6mo. 

Illustrated. I1.50. 

It is a book which none but a true poet could have written : and of which 
any poet might well be proud. — John G. IVhittier. 

OURSELVES AND OUR NEIGHBORS: Short Chats on Social 

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It is wholesome counsel for young and old on topics pertaining to love, en' 
gagements, marriage, married life, social relations, etc — Spri7igfieid Union. 

MISS EYRE FROM BOSTON, AND OTHERS. i6mo. $1.25; 

paper, 50 cents. 

Her style Is piquant, and her satire almost unconscious in its felicity — The 
Beacon 

BED-TIME STORIES. With Illustrations by Addie Ledyard 

Square i6mo. $1.25. 

Her pretty book of " Bed-Time Stories," is spotless as an open calla ; and 
so rich in beautiful lessons attractively conveyed that every mother should pre- 
sent her children with it, as a text-book on children's manners towards parents, 
servants, and companions- — Chicago Times 

MORE BSD-TIME STORIES. With Illustrations by Addie Led- 
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NEW BED-TIME STORIES. With Illustrations by Addie Led- 
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STORIES TOLD AT TWILIGHT. With Illustrations by H. Win 
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Messrs. Roberts Brothers'' Publications, 




9 

• e 



In Spain and Elsewhere. 

By LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON, 

Author of '' In the Garden of T>r earns,'' ''Swallow Flights,^* 
''Random T^ambles," etc. 

12ino. ClottL. Price, $1.50. 



EXTRACTS FROM ETIGLISH OPINIONS OF "LAZY TOURS." 

Mrs. Chandler Moulton's chapters of travel on the European conti- 
nent are charmhigly chatty. There is a literary flavour about them which 
reveals the accomplished woman of letters under all the guise of a lazy 
tourist. Acute and discriminating art criticisms, apt personal allusions^ 
and literary illustrations come i7i upon every page. Geneva is the more 
interesting to Mrs. Moultou because near there is the Maison Diodati, 
where Byron and Shelley lived for a time, and where Mrs. Shelley wrote 
" Frankenstein " ; a visit to Florence naturally calls forth loving references 
to the Brownings; a sojourn on the Yorkshire moors suggests "Jane 
Eyre" and Charlotte Bronte. These "Lazy Tours" are of value not 
only as a record of travel in pursuit of pleasure and health, but also as 
reflecting something of the writer's very charming personality. It is 
delightful to attend to the impressions of so ctdtured an observer. — From 
the Daily Mail, Lotidojt. 

The author gives us her impressions with much brightness and vivacity. 
She seeks less to inform than to interest ; and in interesting she thoroughly 
succeeds. These "Lazy Tours," in fact, are eminently the work of a 
clever and cultivated woman. — Daily Globe, London. 

Vivid and imaginative sketches of places and people render Mrs. Moul- 
ton's " Lazy Tours" a pleasant book into which to dip at random. The 
book reveals mind, as well as mood ; for Mrs. Moulton has ideas and the 
courage of them, and they leap to light in artistic criticism, and sometimes 
in subtle appreciation of much more tlian the mere pageants of life. . . . 
These Lazy Tours are recorded with a picturesque and cultured pen, and 
a fresh audacity of social judgment. — The Speaker, London. 

The author of " Lazy Tours " is a well-known American writer; and 
these essays are brightly written and entertaining accounts of tours in 
Spain, Italy, and Germany. — The Times, Londoii. 

Many are the women-writers who crowd our shelves with unquickened 
pages, but Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton is not of these. Her " Lazy 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 

Life of Her Majesty ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

QUEEN VICTORIA. 

BY 

MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT. 
12mo. Cloth. Portrait. Price, $1.25. 



In writing her "Life of Queen Victoria" the author has very wisely refrained 
from any attempt to narrate, even in outline, the history of the salient events of 
the Victorian era. She has concerned herself chiefly with what she calls the for- 
mative influences that have helped to develop the character of Queen Victoria, and 
have largely determined her position as a woman, and her career as a sovereign. 
E ven in treating the political and personal events of Queen Victoria's later reign, 
Mrs. Fawcett has selected and dwelt upon those which serve to illustrate the char- 
acter of the queen and her understanding of her responsibilities as a ruler. The 
tone of the biography is m,turally laudatory, — it could not well be otherwise, — but 
in its portrayal of a sympathetic, considerate, and unpretentious nature it keeps 
well within the limits of tliat impartial spirit which should alv/ays animate a biog- 
rapher. The book is exceedingly x-eadable, because it presents the leading events in 
the queen's career in an orderly and definite way, and it is moreover very grace- 
fully written. Selections from contemporary memoirs and from the queen's own 
correspondence and diary are judiciously used, and help to give animation to the 
narrative. The book has a fine frontispiece portrait from a recent photograph of 
the queen, and is provided with a chronological table and index. — The Beacon. 

Roberts Brothers, Boston, publish in a volume of about tv/o hundred and fifty 
pages Millicent Fawcett's useful and instructive life of Queen Victoria, in whom, 
the author conceives, modern constitutional government has found more support 
and development than in any other royal person. Aided by the queen's sagacity 
and devotion to duty, that pliase of human polity has been created, in the author's 
opinion. And this theory is well developed m the chapters of the book which give 
the childhood and education of Victoria ; her accession to the throne ; the mingling 
of politics and love which followed ; the leaning in difficult affairs of state upon her 
young German husband, without alienating her loyal and faithful ministers; the 
loss of that husband at the difficult time of the American Civil War, in which he 
showed himself a friend of the North ; the queen's retirement from society in con- 
sequence, and her quiet life ever since, while always ready for her duties as queen 
and Empress of India. The home life of the royal pair, and later, of the queen 
alone, at Balmoral and Osborne, and her more stately residences in London and at 
Windsor, takes up several chapters of exceptional interest. Chapter IX. is entitled 
"The Nursery," and its duties alone would have engrossed most women ; but the 
queen has been active for more than fifty years in large affairs of peace and wpr, 
and shown excellent judgment and conduct through them all. There are portraits 
of Her Majesty ta,ken in 1835, and again by photograph in later years. — Broollpi 
Eagle. 

One of the special charms of the book is that it is more personal than politic!'!, 
— that it gives us the always to be desired insight into the home and the domestic 
life of one who lives so much in the glare and glamour of publicity. — Advertiser. 



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Messrs. Roberts Brothers'' Publications, 
THE RIGHT HONORABLE 

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE 

^ ^tttlip from life 
By HENRY W. LUCY. 

12mo. Cloth. Portrait. Price, $1.25. 



The obvious difficulty of writing within the limits of this volume a sketch of the 
career of Mr- Gladstone is the superabundance of material. The task is akin to that of 
a builder having had placed at his disposal materials for a palace, with instructions to 
erect a cottage residence, leaving out nothing essential to the larger plan. I have 
been content, keeping this condition in mind, rapidly to sketch, in chronological 
order, the main course of a phenomenally busy life, enriching the narrative wherever 
possible with autobiographical scraps to be found in the library of Mr. Gladstone's 
public speeches, supplementing it by personal notes made over a period of twenty 
years, during which I have had unusual opportunities of studymg the subject. 
Author's Preface. 

Mr. Lucy begins with the boyhood and early home-life of his subject, and in a 
series of twenty-six graphic chapters, some of the titles of which are "Member for 
Newark," "Chancellor of the Exchequer," "Premier," "Pamphleteer," "The 
Bradlaugh Blight," "Egypt," "The Kilmainham Treaty," "The Stop-Gap Govern- 
ment," " Home Rule," " In the House and Out," Mr. Lucy has drawn, we believe, 
the most accurate portrait of one of the greatest men of the century yet drawn, and 
has told most graphically, tersely, and at the same time comprehensively, the story of 
a great career not yet finished. We have nowhere seen a better description of Mr. 
Gladstone's methods, of his strength and weakness as a debater, than Mr. Lucy gives 
us. — Boston A dveriiser. 

Mr. Lucy entitles his new book on Gladstone "A Study from Life." It is more 
than this, for the book covers rapidly his whole life, from birth to the present time, 
describing with tolerable clearness the great events of which he has been a part. 
Koran outline biography the reader will find this narrative satisfactory and readable. 
P)Ut the greatest interest attaches to those incidents in Gladstone's life of which the 
writer has been an eye-witness. He describes with great vivacity the parliamentary 
function known as "drawing old Gladstone out." — Adva7ice. 

Roberts Brothers, Boston, have just published an interesting book by Henry W, 
Lucy, entitled "Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone: A Study from Life." Thougt 
not necessarily so intended, this history ot Gladstone is virtually the history of his 
country during the period of his ascendency at least, and the book is valuable frorr 
that standpoint, because it is evidently fairly conceived and executed. The sketch o 
Mr. Gladstone is that of an admirer, but that will not tell against it with the world a 
large, which is alone an admirer of the " Grand Old Man." Beginning with his boy 
hood, it pictures him with friendly but faithful hand to the end of his career as heac 
of the English Government, in language which gives an additional charm to the book- 
tracing his course from the day he became Member of Parliament till he was thi 
acknowledged champion of Home Rule, and showing how, as his mind develope( 
with experience, it cast off original errors growing larger day by day. — Brooklyt 
Citizen. 



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Dream I^ife ^ I^eal l^ifc. 

ai ilittle african g)tor^^ 



By olive SCHREINER, 

AUTHOR OF "dreams" AND "THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FAKM.'' 

16m,o. Salf cloth. 60 cents. 



These are veritable poems in prose that Olive Schreiner has brought 
together. With her the theme is ever the martyrdom, the self-sacrifice and 
)he aspirations of woman ; and no writer has expressed these qualities with 
deeper profundity of pathos or with keener insight into the motives that 
govern the elemental impulses of the human heart. To read the three 
little stories in this book is to touch close upon the mysteries of love and 
fate and to behold the workings of tragedies that are acted in the soul. 
The Beacon. 

Three small gems are the only contents of this literary casket ; and yet 
they reflect so clearly the blending of reality and ideality, and are so per- 
fectly polished with artistic handling, that the reader is quite content with 
the three. It is a book to be read and enjoyed. — Public Opinion. 

There is a peculiar charm about all of these stories that quite escapes 
the cursory reader. It is as evasive as the fragrance of the violet, and 
equally difficult to analyze. The philosophy is so subtle, the poetry so 
delicate, that the fascination grows upon one and defies description. With 
style that is well nigh classic in its simplicity Miss Schreiner excites our 
emotions and gently stimulates our imagination. — The Budget. 

All the sketches reveal originality of treatment, but the first one is a 
characteristically pathetic reproduction of child-life under exceptional 
circumstances, that will bring tears to many eyes. — Saturday Evening 
Gazette. 



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In Foreign Kitchens. 



W 



ITH Choice Recipes from England, France, 
Germany, Italy, and the North. 

By HELEN CAMPBELL, 

A-uthor of '* The Easiest Way in JlouseJeeeping and Cooleing," 
** Prisoners of Poverty, '^ *' The What-To-I>o Club/' etc. 



16M0. Cloth. Price, 50 cents. 



While foreign cookbooks are accessible to all readers of foreign 
languages, and American ones have borrowed from them for what we 
know as " French cookery," it is difficult often to judge the real value 
of a dish, or decide if experiment in new directions is worth while. 
The recipes in the following chapters, prepared originally for The 
Epimre, of Boston, were gathered slowly, as the author found them in 
use, and are most of them taken from family recipe-books, as valued 
abroad as at home. So many requests have come for them in some 
more convenient form than that offered in the magazine, that thelv 
present shape has been determined upon ; and it is hoped they may be 
a welcome addition to the housekeeper's private store of rules for 
varying the monotony of the ordinary menu. 



\ 



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Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 

POWER THROUGH REPOSE. 

By ANNIE PAYSON CALL. 

" When the body is perfectly adjusted, perfectly supplied with force^ 
perfectly free, and works with the greatest economy of expenditure, it is 
fitted to be a perfect instrument alike of impression, experience, and 
expression.^'' — W. R. Alger. 



One Handsome l6mo Volume. Cloth. Price, $1.00. 



"This book is needed. The nervous activity, the intellectual 
wear and tear, of this day and land requires a physical repose 
as has none other. Every intellectual worker finds so much stim- 
ulant in his associations and in the opportunities for labor that 
he takes on more and more responsibilities, till he has all the strain 
it is possible for him to carry when everything goes smoothly, and 
when complications arise he has no reserve for emergencies." — 
Journal of Education. 

*' A book which has a peculiar timeliness and value for a great 
number of people in this country is ' Power through Repose,' by 
Annie Payson Call. This volume, which is written in a very 
interesting and entertaining style, is a moderate and judicious effort 
to persuade Americans that they are living too hard and too fast, 
and to point out specifically the physical and intellectual results 
of incessant strain. To most people the book has a novel sugges- 
tiveness. It makes us feel that we are the victims of a disease of 
which we were largely ignorant, and that there are remedies within 
our reach of which we are equally ignorant. We know of no 
volume that has come from the press in a long time which, widely 
and wisely read, could accomplish so muCh immediate good as 
this little book. It is the doctrine of physical rest stated in un- 
technical language, with practical suggestions. It ought to be in 
the hands of at least eight out of every ten men and women now 
living and working on this continent." — Christian Union. 



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A BOOK FOR MOTHERS. 



By DR. GENEVIEVE TUCKER. 
Fully illustrated. Small 4to. Cloth. Price, $i.^o. 



The object of the author in presenting this work is to furnish 
a practical summary of the infant's hygiene and physical develop- 
ment. The aim of the book is to be a guide to mothers, particu- 
larly young and inexperienced ones. It purposes to teach and help 
a mother to understand her babe, to feed it properly, to place it in 
healthful surroundings, and to watch its growth and development 
with intelligence, and thus relieve in a measure the undue anxiety 
and nervous uncertainty of a new mother. The book in not in- 
tended in any measure to take the place of a physician, but rather 
to aid the physician in teaching the mother to care properly for her 
babe when well, that she may better nurse it when sick. 



Heredity. 
Prenatal Period. 
The Little Stranger, 
Growth and Develop- 
ment. 
Bathing. 
Dress. 
Sleep. 



CONTENTS. 

Crying Babies. 

The Eyes. 

Nursing. 

The "Wet-Nurse. 

Weaning. 

Feeding after Weaning. 

Teething. 

Hand-Feeding. 



Bowels and Kidneys. 

Posture. 

Exercise. 

Habit. 

A Study of Babies. 

The Baby's Basket. 

Nursery Pointers. 

Nursery Don'ts. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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